ThePopTort

Poverty vs. the Insurance Industry - It's Bananas!

Spoiler Alert – If you are an insurance industry executive reading ThePopTort today, stop now or this might really spoil your day.

The nation's poverty rate increased to 15.1 percent in 2010, up from 14.3 percent in 2009 and the highest level since 1993, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's annual Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage report for 2010. An additional 2.6 million people landed in poverty last year, bringing the total to 46.2 million -- the highest number since the government started tracking poverty in the 1950s. 

"Income down, poverty up, health insurance coverage down or flat," said Ron Haskins, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, in a statement. "The news on economic well-being in the U.S. is not good. Worse, children’s poverty increased for the fourth year in a row and at 22 percent is the highest since 1993. Child poverty has been higher than the 2010 level in only three years since the mid-1960s."

This is bad enough.  But to be defined as poor in this country, you need to be a family of four with annual earnings of less than $22,314.  I'm guessing there are lots more poor people than this.

Meanwhile,

In 2007, U.S. income inequality hit its highest mark since just ahead of the Great Depression in 1929.  And that was before the current recession brought joblessness and financial peril to scores of Americans, most of whom are on the wrong side of the wealth divide. … "We have this growing elite that makes the economy of the United States look more like a banana republic than an economic democracy," says Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois.

(She’s not talking about the clothing store with its limited edition Man Men collection.)  But speaking of mad men, hey insurance execs you can start reading now.  You'll love this!  According to a new Center for Justice & Democracy fact sheet,

As the insurance industry pushes for laws that deprive sick and injured Americans of their right to be fairly compensated for harm caused by corporate wrongdoing, insurance executives continue to collect millions of dollars in compensation.  A recent study in the July 2011 edition of the Insurance Forum shows that insurance executives were collectively paid hundreds of millions of dollars in 2010.

For example, according to the SEC, “114 insurance executives received compensation of $5 million or more in 2010, with 30 receiving $10 million or above.”

Anyone going bananas yet?

Medical Malpractice Immunity for Florida’s Poor? Could You Be Next?

I was hoping to be a bit more uplifting this Monday morning of a holiday week, but an article caught my eye out of Florida over the weekend that unfortunately made me think about the Holocaust - well, specifically, that famous poem by Pastor Martin Niemöller “about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power and the purging of their chosen targets, group after group.”  It goes:

They came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me and by that time no one was left to speak up.

So I thought I'd better speak up.

Florida is one of those states where the midterms did result in a Republican tsunami.  This is a state where lawmakers have already drastically cut back on the rights of medical malpractice victims. There really is little left to do to patients there, except for the last remaining injustice - immunity.  No lawsuits, no redress, no liability, no accountabilty.  Sure enough, Florida's new powers are now raising the possibility of complete immunity for doctors.  The target?  First, the poor. 

According to the article in the Palm Beach Post, the new legislature is grappling with the fact that “Doctors participating in Medicaid are not paid enough to treat the poor and there aren't enough doctors, especially expensive specialists, to go around.”

Of course everyone – even the Florida Medical Association – admits that low reimbursement rates to doctors is the primary reason for this. But, adds the lobbyist, “he thought doctors ‘are more likely to participate’ if they are given immunity from lawsuits.”  That would be no matter how egregious the malpractice and no matter how seriously they hurt someone.  Could be you.  Could be your spouse.  Could be your child, who may require a lifetime of care.

On the table: offering doctors who treat Medicaid patients "sovereign immunity," the same protection afforded to county health departments. Under that proposal, doctors would be considered agents of the state and entitled to the same $100,000 damages cap for each adverse incident as government entities are.

Think that’s far fetched?  Not when you consider that Sen. John Thrasher, the former House Speaker and “until recently a lobbyist for the Florida Medical Association [is now] one of the legislature's most influential members.”  (That would be Chair of the Senate Rules Committee). 

The paper says that “doctors perceive Medicaid patients to be a greater risk of malpractice lawsuits” because, among other things, “Medicaid patients often don't have a primary care physician and wind up in the emergency room for more expensive treatment.” 

First of all, the ER is the place in a hospital where most medical malpractice occurs, according the Institute of Medicine.  So while a greater percentage of patients who are injured or killed in hospitals are probably poor, “Karen Woodall, a lobbyist who advocates for the poor, said poor people in general file fewer lawsuits because they don't have the resources or education to hire attorneys.  'You could take care of that by raising those rates. Then you take care of the concern you might have that people haven't received proper medical treatment by making sure they get their medical treatment. I mean, hello,' Woodall said."

Here’s another little problem.  “Letting doctors off the hook for malpractice on Medicaid patients also might violate constitutional due process rights by creating a second class of citizens who don't have the same rights as those who can afford health care.”

So maybe the constitution will stop the “purging of chosen targets” in Florida.  If not, look out everyone else.