1. Have you ever cancelled a preauthorization for a Monday cancer surgery….on a Friday afternoon?
2. Do you send routinely fliers to your customers extolling how you’re a leader in cutting health care costs, but in the same mailing tell them their premiums are going up again?
3. Have you ever had a good chuckle about refusing to cover an insulin pump for a diabetic patient?
4. Have you ever held a darts competition to decide which medication you’ll cover and which you won’t? Give yourself a bonus point if you require a brand name instead of a generic medication on a random medication.
5. Have you contemplated buying a clinic or hospital system so you can provide cut rate medical care, control all physician decision making, ensure patients have no choice in their providers— but really so you can install that salt water Olympic sized pool in your vacation home?
6. True or false: An insurance company claims adjuster should decide what is medically necessary for patients.
7. Do you pride yourself on having set up more hoops for patients to jump through than a standard dog agility course?
8. True or false: Any insurance company worth its salt should have several glitzy skyscrapers, gorgeous water fountains and gardens in front of its buildings, and executive salaries that would make an authoritarian dictator blush.
9. Have you ever forced a patient to change medications to another similar but inferior medication…just cuz? (Just kidding, we know it’s because of juicy pharmaceutic manufacturing rebates, but shhhhhhh.)
10. Do you have a reimbursement formula for mental health treatment and counseling that looks similar to this: PAYMENT = CURRENT MARKET VALUE OF PEANUTS?
11. Do you have company award for the longest your employees can draw out a preauthorization claim? Give yourself a well-deserved bonus point if it’s a time sensitive or emotionally charged matter such as a biopsy for possibly metastatic cancer.
12. Did you post record profits while hiking premiums and complaining that you’re hemorrhaging money due to the Affordable Care Act?
13. True or false: When your family member gets sick, you just pay out of pocket for that out-of-network doctor you know is the best. But you still won’t offer a good contract to them.
14. You’ve managed to keep a straight face while telling people you’re a “not-for-profit” company.
15. Do you sometimes put physicians on speaker phone and gather everyone round to chuckle as they plead for some “medically necessary” test or procedure for their patients? Before telling them that first they’ll need a third opinion from a specialist, an ultrasound, a 14-week trial of CBD oil, and a feather from a female Red-tailed hawk to proceed.
So, are you an evil insurance company? Or do you still have a lot to learn? Add up your points: +1 for any “yes” or “true”
Points 1-5: Baseline evil/annoying. Okay, so you impeded care and make some doctors’ offices and patients waste their time on the phones for hours. But think of all the profit and misery you’re missing out on! Better go back to the C-suite and get your board of directors’ priorities in order. Remember, it’s all about the “patient,” wink wink.
Points 6-10: Pretty evil. Wow. Okay, so if you had a heart, it would be a lump of coal, but thankfully that’s not the issue. The issue is you’re missing out on your piece of the American health care dream – making money while blaming rising costs on evil doctors and sick patients. Tell your bureaucrats to step up their game!
>10 Points: Inner circle of hell. Satan is giving you a golf clap. Truth is, he’s just jealous. Everyone knows he’s evil, but you are somehow able to make everyone believe you care deeply about improving health care of this world…despite raking in profits while denying patients’ coverage, hiking premiums, driving physicians to burnout, patients to financial ruin, and loving every minute of it. Congratulations! Your fiefdom of primary care and specialist physicians is completely hamstrung by ridiculous rules and regulations. Since they can barely provide medical care in between battles against your fortress of bureaucracy, you can probably go ahead and require them to wash your cars and clean your pool out too.
