Okay, This Is Interesting...

Bill Moyers interviews Wendell Potter (who was, until recently, a major executive of the health insurance company Cigna. The transcript is here.

It is very interesting, and in some places moving.  For instance, Potter details the insurance industry's playbook for marginalizing Michael Moore after he filmed Sicko.  I think I have been played for a patsy and I resent it.

However, the part I thought was most interesting was this:

BILL MOYERS: Why is public insurance, a public option, so fiercely opposed by the industry?

WENDELL POTTER: The industry doesn't want to have any competitor. In fact, over the course of the last few years, has been shrinking the number of competitors through a lot of acquisitions and mergers. So first of all, they don't want any more competition period. They certainly don't want it from a government plan that might be operating more efficiently than they are, that they operate. The Medicare program that we have here is a government-run program that has administrative expenses that are like three percent or so.

BILL MOYERS: Compared to the industry's--

WENDELL POTTER: They spend about 20 cents of every premium dollar on overhead, which is administrative expense or profit. So they don't want to compete against a more efficient competitor.

Yes, you read it (t)here first folks: The health insurance industry is afraid that a government-run health insurance plan might be more efficient than they are.

Either Cigna believes that government can, too, be efficient---or Cigna believes that health insurance companies are really inefficient.  And it looks like they may have the numbers to back it up.

And apparently--get this--the part of the money the insurance companies take in, that gets used to pay claims (you know, the point of insurance?) is called "the medical loss ratio."  And of course any good company tries to reduce losses, and they have--it's down from 90% in the 1990s to just slightly over 80% now.

Interesting.