WASHINGTON—Two top lawmakers who deal with health care issues, Sens. Bernie Sanders, Ind-Vt., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., are demanding their congressional committees haul the nation’s health insurance CEOs into a hearing to answer tough questions.
One such question: Why are your companies making money hand over foot while denying payments for care to millions of people’s claims? Or: Why are you personally, raking in millions of dollars while the rest of the country scratches and scrambles to pay medical bills?
The two lawmakers want the CEOs to appear before their committees, the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions panel, where Sanders is the top minority-side member, and the Senate Finance Committee. It writes Medicare legislation, and Wyden is its top Democrat.
But they can’t call the hearings themselves. Only the chairs of HELP, Bill Cassidy, R-La., and Finance, Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, can. So Sanders and Wyden, in an April 1 letter, asked them to do so.
If it occurs, the hearing could be revealing. Health care now takes one-sixth of the U.S. economy, second only to the financial sector. And the insurers are key players. And the key gainers: The top seven insurers in the U.S. last year garnered $54 billion in profits, Sanders and Wyden said. Independent analysts put that at a 15%-20% profit margin, after $143 billion in overhead costs.
The insurers decide whether they can just take your premium cash and not pay for your care when you’re hospitalized or need to see a doctor. They set rates for how much they pay hospitals and doctors. That leaves providers underpaid and thousands of patients stuck with bankrupting bills.
Meanwhile, the insurers’ CEOs are raking in millions of dollars apiece each year in pay and compensation, Sanders and Wyden told Cassidy and Crapo.
Costs to consumers and billions to insurers have led Sanders, for years, to be the Senate’s top advocate of single-payer government-run health care. That would eliminate the insurance industry, which rips off both consumers and companies while shortchanging hospitals and doctors, he says.
It also would be cheaper, even with a tax hike to cover the cost of single-payer. That’s because tax revenue would replace the billions of dollars that both firms and workers now fork over to the insurers yearly. Up to 20% goes for insurers’ profits. The average individual premium in the U.S. is $15,500 yearly, and that’s before deductibles and co-pays, Sanders and Wyden said.
Those reasons are also why National Nurses United has led a multi-decade crusade for single-payer, saying it would put “People Over Profits.” Other unions have joined in.
The GOP-run House Ways and Means Committee held a similar hearing earlier this year on the same issue, Sanders and Wyden reminded their GOP colleagues. That panel has refused to act on the issue since. Sanders and Wyden particularly hope Cassidy, an M.D. himself who has had patients unable to pay and whose insurers refuse to pay, will agree.
“We have a health care system that is fundamentally broken,” they wrote.
“While we spend over twice as much per capita on health care as other wealthy nations, over 85 million Americans are uninsured or under-insured, more than half a million people go bankrupt due to medically related debt, one out of four cannot afford the medicine their doctors prescribe, and over 60,000 die every year because they can’t afford to see a doctor on time,” Sanders and Wyden wrote.
“And the public deserves to know why big insurance executives…continue to get rich, as over one-third of people with health insurance have been forced to skip or delay getting the care they need because of the outrageous cost.
“Our constituents report that even when they do have coverage, they have trouble getting access to due to endless denials and requests for prior authorization from insurance companies making billions of dollars each year,” Sanders and Wyden said.
“As working families across the country pay higher and higher premiums, they also face higher deductibles, coinsurance, and copayments when they need to actually use their coverage,” they said.
For workers, health care and its cost have become the #1 economic issue, both in opinion polls and at the bargaining table. For years, unionized workers have been forced, during negotiations, to give up pay raises in return for keeping health insurance at all or for reducing yearly increases.
The non-profit and non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation reports that from 2000 to 2010, health insurers raised prices by 49.8%, while the cost of all goods and services rose by 28.4%. The Affordable Care Act, enacted in 2010, was supposed to cushion the burden on consumers, but insurers kept hiking prices up.
Insurers increased prices another 71.5% from January 2010 through mid-2024, Kaiser reported. Overall inflation rose by 57.7%.
A few enlightened companies realize they pay twice for high health care costs: Once for premiums to the insurers and a second time by being less competitive in the market, as foreign firms in their fields benefit from single-payer government-run insurance.
But the problem may worsen, Wyden and Sanders warn. Not only do insurers bestride the health care market, but now they’re gobbling up providers—such as pharmacies and physicians’ practices. Doing so “allows them to maximize profits at every stage of patient care,” the senators said.
“Meanwhile, companies like UnitedHealth, Cigna, and CVS/Aetna have spent billions on stock buybacks and dividends to further enrich their wealthy stockholders.
“It is time for our committees to hold the chief executives of the major health insurance companies accountable for their greed and to address the health care crisis in America,” they concluded.
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