Cream of the Crop
Insurance companies are well-known for their avarice and cold-hearted approach to human health and well-being. It doesn’t matter whether or not you would die from lack of coverage, they would rather you expire than cover someone who wouldn’t make them any money.
That’s the nature of a private, capitalist healthcare system. They don’t care if your children’s faces will fall off without coverage, they’ll do everything in their power to keep you from costing them money.
Of course, the government (which they spare no expense in lobbying) does everything it can to make sure this doesn’t change.
Case in point; meet artist, Cranky Yellow contributer, and new mother Elizabeth Frick (A.K.A. Ahimsa Creations).
That’s right everyone, the insurance company (ironically named “Golden Rule”) has colluded with the Missouri State government to push the costs of insuring undesirable babies to us, the tax-payers. That way insurance companies can be sure to only get healthy children who won’t cost them a penny, meaning they will get as much money as possible for providing as few services as possible. In the meantime, we must all pay the price for maintaining their bottom-line! It’s win-win!
This whole phenomena is very common; so common it has a name in the social sciences field: “Creaming”. Creaming is the process by which insurance companies do everything they can to insure people with little chance of becoming sick while leaving sickly people out in the cold. The elderly, the terminally ill, people with pre-existing conditions, high-risk individuals who are not yet sick, diabetics, and HIV+ individuals (or just gay men, they actually want to know your sexuality in order to provide you with health and/or life insurance). In other words, they take the “cream” off the top, the best most delicious part, and leave the rest for society or individuals to deal with.
To say that creaming is common is kind of an understatement; insurance companies couldn’t exist without the policy. There is simply no money in insuring people who actually need insurance, what would be the benefit? They have to make sure that costs do not exceed revenue, or that people in need of coverage do not come close to exceeding those that don’t.
Now, I have absolutely no problem with providing healthcare coverage to anyone in need; well, to be totally honest I think healthcare is a human right and should be provided to anyone and everyone. The real problem here is that this is social healthcare gone backwards; it is an issue of private enterprise externalizing their costs to the rest of society so they can enrich themselves.
It’s disgusting; it’s inhuman to write a copy-paste emotionless letter to a new family saying that their child was unlucky enough to be able to fit in a loophole and they are happy to cram her through it. They regretted to inform them that they couldn’t wait to toss their adoptive child to the curb because of flaws in Missouri state insurance policy.
Golden Rule is probably telling the truth when they say “We treat all children the same”. If they could find loopholes for any unhealthy children, adopted or otherwise, they would drop them faster than you can say “denied”.
Here is the Frick’s blog if you’d like to know more about them.
