Care rationed for the insured based on ability to pay
CEOs Defend Healthcare Deal
By Debora Vrana
Los Angeles Times
July 9, 2005
UnitedHealth’s William W. McGuire and PacifiCare’s Howard Phanstiel described the $8.1-billion deal (the acquisition of PacifiCare Health Systems Inc. by industry giant UnitedHealth Group Inc.)… as a step toward a more rational healthcare system.
“We’re going to bring in some new things there,” (McGuire) said. “This very much fits into our agenda to try to bring better healthcare services to different constituents and do it in a way that is unbounded by geography and other traditional restraints. I’m committed to it as I can be.”
Over the long term… an answer (to problems with the nation’s healthcare
system) will involve finding a way to ensure that everyone receives a minimum level of care, he said. But some treatments will be available only to those who can afford them.
“There is not enough money to pay for the healthcare system as it operates today. It is indiscriminate, it is non-scientifically based, it is founded on anecdote as much as it is science,” McGuire said. “We have to change course.”
Phanstiel, 56, would become an executive vice president of UnitedHealth Group and remain in Orange County. He said Friday that he would reap about $190 million from the transaction in PacifiCare stock options, restricted shares and other equity instruments (plus about $25 million in other benefits).
“I’m not doing this to get money…,” Phanstiel said.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-united9jul09,1,6408727.story
Comment: Just to be clear, this is not “to get money,” but it is to “change course” by being certain that “some treatments will be available only to those who can afford them.”
The United States stands alone in rationing health care for the uninsured based on the ability to pay. UnitedHealth/PacifiCare is joining the process of expanding this uniquely American concept into rationing health care for the insured as well, based on the ability to pay.
If insurance is no longer about the egalitarian concept of sharing risk, then what is it for? Maybe it really is “to get the money.”