Does the current health-care system “ration” care?
Sure does. It just so happens that the allegedly wildly popular Medicare program — the one liberals point to so often as a model, saying, See, government-run health care ain’t so bad — rations care the most, more so than any other private insurer.
So, if you’re looking to quiet down your ill-informed liberal friends, here’s a good bit of ammo. Agree with them. Tell them rationing does happen, just most often through the government, not the big bad insurance companies. And when private insurers “ration” care, they’re not denying or technically rationing squat: all they’re saying is, Go ahead and get the care; we’re just not going to pay for it. But when the government is the only one in charge, they’ll both deny the care and its payment.
How liberals don’t see this is beyond me. Here’s the ammo I mentioned:
Insurers Deny More Claims than Government Plans?
The Facts:
According the AMA’s “2008 National Health Insurance Report Card,”[1] Medicare had the highest percentage, and largest number, of denied medical claims. In fact, Medicare denied 10 times more medical claims than any private insurer.
The chart below, from the AMA, shows that Medicare denied more than 475,000 claims in a recent one-year span.
| Payer | Count of records | Denied records | Percent of
claim lines denied |
Date range |
| Aetna | 637,239 | 43,317 | 6.80% | 03/01/2007 – 3/10/2008 |
| Anthem | 250,070 | 11,546 | 4.62% | 03/01/2007 – 3/10/2008 |
| CIGNA | 263,728 | 9,060 | 3.44% | 03/01/2007 – 3/10/2008 |
| Coventry | 20,487 | 590 | 2.88% | 03/01/2007 – 3/10/2008 |
| Health Net | 4,975 | 193 | 3.88% | 03/01/2007 – 3/10/2008 |
| Humana | 143,026 | 4,142 | 2.90% | 03/01/2007 – 3/10/2008 |
| Medicare | 6,938,431 | 475,566 | 6.85% | 03/01/2007 – 3/10/2008 |
| UHC | 1,127,691 | 30,177 | 2.68% | 03/01/2007 – 3/10/2008 |
[1] http://www.ama-assn.org/ama1/pub/upload/mm/368/2008-nhirc-report-card.pdf
