How many people work in the health insurance industry?

[napi21]

I tried Google but found nothing.

The reason I'm asking is that if you work in that business, wouldn't you be inclined not to vote for anyone or anything that threatens it?

I'm trying to understand why so many people & not only Pubs are against the single payer or even a public option. I understand why Wall Street is, and even why some Congress critters who get a lot of their money from them are against it, but I'm thinking in broader terms. Wouldn't people who are employed in that usiness contact their Congressman and ask that they vote against this because they're afraid of lsing their job?

[cherokeeprogressive]

1. It's not just that. My ex-wife used to work in the medical billing industry.

She worked for a billing service for anesthesiologists. It was a rather small company in So. Cal. Her quarterly bonus was never less than $1200 per quarter.

I'm thinking that medical billing and coding personnel, no offense to any of them, would have to be at the bottom of the food chain. When the people at the bottom of any employment chain make $5000 per year in bonuses, something is askew.

Who pays those bonuses? Patients.

[napi21]

2. Praise to your wife! That's a very nerve wracking business!

Nobody wants to admit mistake, nobody want's pay the claim, and the biller is always wrong! (Or so the ins co's & providers say!)

[Indenturedebtor]

4. I work with billing data. We don't make a ton of money

It's actually some of the worst paying work in IT heh. But we do real good for the quality of care - we take billing and other data and use it to identify issues with process, issues with specific doctors, in literally thousands of different ways.

The reason why we're able to operate is because of Medicare! Medicare requires base line levels of performance to get paid - we help hospitals reach those levels.

Your wife was lucky... billing and coding personnel typically don't make anything to write home about.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

3. None. It's just a single gigantic computer that Obama uses for death panels and playing Tetris...

...when he's not busy killing people in Afghanistan with his bare hands.

[ecstatic]

5. Not just that--doctors, pharmacists, etc. would all face pay cuts

under a single payer system. Americans would have to shift the way they think when it comes to medical school/training. In other countries, people go into the health industry because they genuinely want to help people--not for the pay.

[napi21]

6. If yu're talking about adopting Medicare as the single payer system, I agree with you,

but the private option they were fighting for would not have done that! That program would have to negotiate the same as the prvate industry does. I didn't see it as anything else than another ins. co. except it would have been a non-profit.

[Jim Sagle]

7. About half.

;)

[zeos3]

8. In the words of Upton Sinclair...

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"