Insurers are expensive middlemen

Regarding "Insurer puts undue pressure on doctors" [Letters, May 19]: I am a clinical social worker, and I can tell you from hard experience that many private insurance companies are only out to make a profit, often at the direct expense of their own customers, and at the indirect expense of the government.

For example, private insurance companies often deny payment for medical treatment without justification to the agency providing service, making it time-consuming and burdensome for the understaffed and underfunded agency to protest. Since the agency cannot abandon its responsibility to provide service to a suicidal patient, for example, service is continued at the expense of the agency, with the financial support of the limited government funding we are granted. In effect, the private insurance company's clients are paid for by the agency and the government, without costing the insurance company an extra penny.

Or, the private insurance company will raise its co-pay requirements, knowing full well that its customers cannot afford the increase. As a result, the agency again spends its own limited funds, or worse, the client prematurely drops out of treatment.

Expanding Medicare is the only fair way to go. It would cost less, without the need to make a profit and pay the private executive salaries. Nor would we need the insurance company itself to act as an unessential and parasitic middleman.

Robert N. Shorin, Syosset