UnitedHealth Group is America’s largest insurance corporation.

Today, at a press briefing at UnitedHealth’s Washington, D.C.
headquarters, the company released a report titled “Federal Health Care Cost Containment — How in Practice Can it Be Done?”

The report lists 15 options.

Incentivize members to use high quality providers.

Reduce avoidable and inappropriate care.

Incentivize physicians to encourage high quality care.

Apply evidence-based standards to reimbursement policies.

What did not make the list?

Get rid of the hundreds of health insurance companies.

Replace them with one single payer.

Save $400 billion a year in overheard costs and profits.

Insure everyone.

No more bills, co-pays, deductibles.

No more 60 Americans dying every day from lack of health insurance.

Why didn’t single payer make UnitedHealth’s list of options?

Because under single payer, UnitedHealth would be driven out of business.

The American people would win.

The health insurance industry – and UnitedHealth – would lose.

It’s a win/lose proposition.

Before UnitedHealth’s press briefing got started, Russell Mokhiber of
Single Payer Action asked UnitedHealth’s Simon Stevens, why he opposes single payer for the United States. (See video here.)

Stevens said he didn’t want to talk about it at that point.

After all, he was there to talk about cost containment, not single payer.

“But single payer will save $400 billion a year and cover everyone,”
Mokhiber said. “Unfortunately, it would put your company out of
business. Is that why you oppose it?”

“I’ve had experiences in working with single payer systems and
non-single payer systems,” Stevens said. “And there are pluses and
minuses of both. And I’ll be happy to talk with you what those pluses
and minuses are. But we have to get on with the business that we are
here to talk about.”

Which is cost containment.

And the best way to contain costs is by getting rid of the health
insurance industry.

“Sixty Americans die every day from lack of health insurance,”
Mokhiber reminded Stevens. “In Canada today, nobody dies from lack of health insurance.”

Independent journalist Sam Husseini then joined in.

“Did you see the Bill Moyers show?” Husseini asked Stevens.

At that point, a UnitedHealth spokesperson tried to get the press
briefing back on track.

To no avail.

“Moyers goes through every administration,” Husseini said.

Johnson, Carter, Clinton — they tried the piecemeal approach.

And it didn’t work.

“Everybody is supposed to trust the insurance companies?” Husseini
asked Stevens. “Keep you in the saddle and everything will turn out
all right?”

Not.