ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how capitalism has benefited private health insurers. What began as an opportunity to insure one school district, has evolved into an industry that has billions of dollars of annual profits with revenues in the hundreds of billions of dollars. And while these extraordinary health care costs are creating some of the wealthiest businesses in America, they are simultaneously increasing the expenditures for employers and employees across the country. Furthermore, beyond the premiums that private health insurers use to generate income, they also use managed care policies to limit health care organizations’, providers’, and institutions’ revenues (related to hospital stays, services, products, and/or procedures). As a result of these policies, health insurance companies are generating more profit possibilities for themselves. In 21st century America, employer- or individual-based health insurers, vis-à-vis their capitalistic approaches, control health care access and delivery—not the providers who are educated and licensed, nor the institutions that are certified to do so.
