Letter: People should demand mandates

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Well, the other shoe has finally dropped and we now have government-mandated health coverage. The insurance companies are already salivating at increasing their market share, and can already see the bonuses their management will receive instead of paying health care professionals a decent return on their investment.

Now that health coverage has been mandated, we need to mandate back. The health care industry claims it spends 87 cents out of each dollar for patient care, yet they can afford multimillion dollar annual bonuses to their managers who take little or no risk in a business that has built-in customers.

Now we, the mandated, should mandate that insurance companies spend 93 cents out of each dollar for hands-on patient care. This is to be actual patient care not to include legal maneuvering to get out of paying claims or other obvious management tasks. Perhaps then the insurance companies would be forced to become more efficient and still have money to provide good health care.

They have no reason to become more efficient under a mandated insurance plan. They can just keep raising the premiums instead of working with what they have.

Start improving the health care industry by putting some constraints on their bonus program.

Art Krenzel

Battle Ground