Our current healthcare system is not only unsustainable, it’s obscene.

October 10, 2023 An Ethics Class Presentation

As a healthcare systems analyst for 30 years, my expertise was in Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). Most people don’t realize it, but Medicare doesn’t actually administer the Medicare program. The federal government contracts with private health insurance corporations to administer Medicare benefits.

I have worked for many insurance corporations on the business side of government programs. I helped develop and enforce administrative policies and procedures, much of which were aimed at ensuring organizational accountability and adherence to government regulations. It is my opinion that the federal government bakes in the incentive for insurance corporations to lavishly overspend, but they are ever willing partakers of the capitalist driven system which endlessly promotes corporate expansion. And non-profits are no different. They just call it “margin” instead of “profit”.

In 2016, I worked for Humana as a Medicare division manager. Humana’s corporate headquarters in Louisville is a massive 26-story building made of pink granite.[1] It’s an intimidating structure reminiscent of a stone castle surrounded by a moat where uniformed guards prevent all from entering but management…