Wendell Potter cringes when opponents suggests that a “government takeover” of health care will be a milestone on the road to “socialized medicine.” He’s embarrassed that opponents are using a playbook that he helped devise, Nicholas Kristof, two time Pulitzer winning columnist of the New York Times, wrote. [Salt Lake Tribune]
“Over the years I helped craft this messaging and deliver it,” Potter noted.
Potter was a former executive of CIGNA. The “for profit” insurance industry is obsessed with sustaining the company’s stock price — which means paying fewer medical bills.
One way to pay fewer medical bills is to deny requests for expensive procedures.
A second way is “rescission” — seizing upon a technicality to cancel the policy of someone who has been paying premiums and finally gets cancer or some other expensive disease.
A congressional investigation into rescission found that three insurers, including Blue Cross of California, used this technique to cancel more than 20,000 policies over five years, saving the companies $300 million in claims.
Potter notes that a third tactic is for insurers to raise premiums for a small business astronomically after an employee is found to have an illness that will be very expensive to treat. That forces the business to drop coverage for all its employees or go elsewhere.
The insurers are open to one kind of reform — universal coverage through mandates and subsidies, so as to give them more customers and more profits. But they don’t want the reforms that will most help patients, such as a public insurance option, enforced competition and tighter regulation.
Potter argues that much tougher regulation is essential. He also believes that a robust public option is an essential part of any health reform, to compete with for-profit insurers and keep them honest.
Potter ought to know if anyone does. The program he helped develop for the insurance companies that a “government takeover” of health care will be a milestone on the road to “socialized medicine” is working, judging from the Town Hall Meeting held in Pahrump yesterday.
Actually, those that oppose the single-payer solution seem to fail to realize that they will remain at the mercy of the for-profit insurance industry if reformation fails. The propaganda war against health care systematic reform is succeeding, for lots of reasons.
It appears that Congress is determined to allow the private insurance industry to continue. Understandable when one considers the amount of money contributes to those Senators and Congressmen/women. Members of Congress, seemingly most, are not interested in protecting Americans from the scourge of for-profit insurance company practices.
Related posts:
- Wendell Potter Slams Baucus Bill: ‘An Absolute Gift To The Insurance Industry’
- AFL-CIO seeks investigation of health care insurance premiums
- Health Insurance Industry push back on attacks
- Anthem Blue Cross sues state of Maine for refusal to guarantee profit margin
- Single Payer National Health Insurance
