Confessions of a former health insurance agent: You have to be for Barack Obama’s public option
August 13, 2009 at 5:00 am by robpiccirillo
By Rob Piccirillo
PoHo contributor
It may be a surprise to most people who know me that I used to own an insurance agency. That’s right! I, Rob Piccirillo, for a period of about one year and seven months, owned and operated a Florida Insurance Agency, which specialized in selling private health insurance.
My company sold various forms of private insurance, but our bread and butter was Medicare Advantage. Medicare Advantage is a private option that beneficiaries may select instead of Original Medicare (parts A & B), which is provided by the federal government.
I will tell you now, and may the Lord Almighty strike me dead if this is not so: Sometimes it was hard to sleep at night knowing the disservice many in the industry, my cohorts, perhaps even those in my own company had done to many people on many occasions. And although the money I made got me the necessary REMs, the moral question made me quit the business! (That’s why I’m here writing this blog. Do you think the owner of a successful insurance agency would bother scribbling a Political Whore post? Negatory…)
Anyway, the fact of the matter is this: I received a bird’s eye view of what goes on in the health insurance industry.
I witnessed agency owners and mid-level managers conning their agents into believing they were doing the right thing by their clients. I saw beneficiaries bamboozled by those who lied to them, telling them they would receive extra benefits by signing their names onto forms that would switch their doctors and deny them coverage! I understand the way health insurance agencies are organized and managed like a true pyramid scheme, and how political it can be, i.e. the conducting of backroom deals with executives of health care facilities to attain access to leads.
If it was against regulations, I have either seen it, known someone who’s done it or participated in it myself! (That admission of guilt was worked into this piece purely for shock value…wink wink.)
I am for Obama’s “public option” and here is why.
Congress passed a “private option” for Medicare recipients. They allowed millions of older, mostly unknowledgeable and somewhat senile senior American citizens to be fast-talked and hoodwinked by silver tongued, sleezeball salesmen such as myself! So why can’t the vast majority of Americans, many unknowledgeable and somewhat senile as well, opt for public insurance instead?!
Ladies and Gentlemen, you may disagree with the following statements if you’d like, for I truly don’t give a shit! So, here it goes:
Private health insurance companies, as a whole, are a bunch of scumbags. They do not care about you, your health, the well being of your family, or anything, for that matter, that might be construed with good, decent, morals and human interest. The only thing they care about is their bottom line, which is MONEY.
I hope Obama’s plan passes. I also hope, no pray, that if your opinion is anywhere in line with the psychos that pass the propaganda that blinds people into believing Obama’s “public option” is a bad thing, you will begin the process of self-realization. For you, my friends, are sheep.
