AETNA: US Healthcare "Non-effective"--Today's SinglePayer Update

From the mouths of babes…the Chief Medical Officer of

AETNA

finally came out and said it: the care they help deliver is “not all that great.”  It’s inefficient, ineffective, too expensive, not timely, and kills tens of thousands Americans needlessly every year.  Wow.  They finally came out and said it.  Of course they have a secret plan to fix everything.  Elsewhere, a new book sparks a SinglePayer debate and the federal government forces

Wisconsin

to stop negotiating discounted drugs for seniors.

***

AETNA

is a corporate healthcare behemoth, serving tens of millions of Americans with insurance and a range of other products.  In 2006 they were the nation’s 91st largest company, scoring $1.6 billion in profit. 

What do they think of the American healthcare system that they are at the heart of, and milking billions of dollars out of?  It’s “not all that great,” admitted their Chief Medical Officer Troy Brennan. 

This is an extraordinary admission from a company like this.  Brennan is blithely admitting that patients are dying on his watch while he and his buddies rake profits from their care dollars.

What charges do they level against

America

’s broken healthcare system?  Let’s see:

First of all on the safety side, the Institute of Medicine thinks that between 45 and 98,000 people die each year as a result {of care?} that they receive in American hospitals…{which} does create a great opportunity for us because that’s the result of a system of providing medical care in which there’s insufficient decision support and insufficient focus on things that we should do on a routine basic.

In other words, the insurance payments

AETNA

makes don’t encourage good care.  And people die as a result.  Which to me is a reason for getting rid of

AETNA

.

It’s a non-effective healthcare system…It’s not an efficient healthcare system…a shame in some ways that we’re wasting that money, but a great opportunity for us.

He doesn’t address why it’s so inefficient—a good reason would be the 30% administrative waste associated with insurance companies?  What else?

It’s not an equitable healthcare system.  For years, we’ve known that people of color, people from various ethnic backgrounds do not get as good a care in the American healthcare system.

Check.  Don’t forget to add the entirety of working- and middle-class people who can’t afford

AETNA

’s expensive healthcare products.

Finally, and this one is just stunning given that the main argument healthcare corporations make against SinglePayer healthcare is the long waiting lines… 

The healthcare system is not timely…people are waiting an average of about 70 days to see a provider…people initially diagnosed with cancer are waiting over a month.

Of course Troy Brennan argues that AETNA can fix all these systemic failings with some new products, like electronic medical records (and

AETNA

’s now offering a credit card.)  Either way, they’ll continue to make billions.

It’s not death; it’s a sales opportunity.

Is there a way to impeach doctors for violating the Hippocratic oath? 

In other news about our nation’s movement for guaranteed healthcare,

New

Republic

editor Jonathon Cohn has written a new book, Sick, detailing all the faults with the healthcare system that

AETNA

also found.  Cohn’s book has sparked a wicked debate here between SinglePayer advocates and those

who want to preserve a role for mercenary insurance corporations like

AETNA

.  Finally, there’s a big and depressing scandal in

Wisconsin

, where the federal government is forcing the state to get rid of a prescription drug program for seniors because it saves money by negotiating discounts with pharmaceutical companies.