Thinking about the assassination of the health insurance executive in NYC, as a former management prof I come up with maybe a perspective most haven’t thought about. First of all, can we agree we find health insurance pretty expensive, even painfully so?
I know of many examples where the following is true, so I will state it as a general premise. No nation anywhere has been able to pay for as much first class health care or insurance as the populace would happily consume more or less immediately if cost was no object.
In fact attempts to project what those costs might entail so quickly become preposterous as to be ludicrous. Something like “greater than the GDP.”
What is a health insurance executive to do? He fights fraud, writes limitations into policies, and turns down paying for unreasonable procedures of low probable benefit to continued life/health, and won’t cover preexisting conditions unless the coverage is under a big group plan that enrolls a lot of young, healthy people.
At every turn he offends people - some are disappointed crooks, some are hypochondriacs or cranks. Many are decent folk who are hurting with rare or chronic or genetic conditions that fall through the cracks.
In spite of his best efforts, the insurance his firm sells still costs too much and the premiums rise too fast and that pisses off more people. It is an occupation requiring a thick hide, and a tough but caring heart.
Most of us sort of sense the above and grumble but go along because the system, for all its faults, sort of works most of the time for most people. There is a sort of stop-gap minimal coverage with ridiculous wait times for the dirt poor, some of whom go untreated.
For the rest of us, depending on income, care gets better as we can pay more, either in fees or premiums or taxes. Like many other problems in life, throwing money at health issues at least sometimes makes them go away or holds them at bay.
However, as John Maynard Keynes memorably reminded us, “In the long run, we are all dead.”
