When it comes health care analysis, Wendell Potter is the gold standard. Potter is the former top Cigna executive who the Democratic Party turned to in 2008 when Obama promised major health care reform, especially a public option, during his presidential campaign. Potter left a highly lucrative position in the industry after witnessing a scene that shocked him:
Potter began his trip from health care spokesperson to reform advocate while back home in Tennessee. Potter attended a "health care expedition," a makeshift health clinic set up at a fairgrounds, and he tells Bill Moyers, "It was absolutely stunning. When I walked through the fairground gates, I saw hundreds of people lined up, in the rain. It was raining that day. Lined up, waiting to get care, in animal stalls. Animal stalls."
After Obama won the election, Potter testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. His opening words:
Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to be here this afternoon. My name is Wendell Potter and for 20 years, I worked as a senior executive at health insurance companies, and I saw how they confuse their customers and dump the sick — all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors.
I know from personal experience that members of Congress and the public have good reason to question the honesty and trustworthiness of the insurance industry. Insurers make promises they have no intention of keeping, they flout regulations designed to protect consumers, and they make it nearly impossible to understand — or even to obtain — information we need. As you hold hearings and discuss legislative proposals over the coming weeks, I encourage you to look very closely at the role for-profit insurance companies play in making our health care system both the most expensive and one of the most dysfunctional in the world. I hope you get a real sense of what life would be like for most of us if the kind of so-called reform the insurers are lobbying for is enacted.
Wendell Potter is one of my heroes, a man who made an enormous personal sacrifice while trying to improve the lives of others. He saw the nasty truths behind America’s “health care” system, and where that system was headed, then decided to speak out and take action.
Potter was greatly disappointed when Obama took the public option off the table early in the process, as it was the key mechanism that would make the “Affordable Care Act” deliver on it’s promise: affordable health care: he says that Elimination of ‘Public Option’ Threw Consumers to the Insurance Wolves. We have all seen insurance costs continue to rise greatly after the ACA was passed. Listen to what Potter now says about the plan offered by Kamala Harris as Medicare For All: ”Harris’s plan won’t work and history will prove it.”
Senator Harris: You really need to rethink your plan to put private insurers in charge of Medicare
If Sen. Kamala Harris and her advisors consulted with people who know what drives decision-making at big health insurance companies, she surely would never have put privately operated Medicare Advantage plans at the center of her health care reform proposal this week.
They clearly didn’t take the time to look at even recent news reports, much less learn what has happened in the past when the government has tried to do what she is proposing.
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So in 1997, Congress passed legislation to both encourage the wider availability of private Medicare plans (then called Medicare-Choice) and to slow the growth of payments to insurers. In other words, to do exactly what Harris is now proposing.
Insurers responded by heading for the exits.
Potter basically says “Been there, done that, it won’t work” about Harris’ plan.
To be honest, It is curious to me how ANY democratic politician would want to put private insurers in charge of Medicare. “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” How many times do Democrats need to be burned before they will realize that private, for-profit health insurance companies do not make good allies if one’s goal is quality, AFFORDABLE health care?
For-profit Insurance companies make decisions entirely on the basis of what will bring the most profit to their shareholders. They also know that when Grandma is on the table, money is no object. I submit to you that having predatory capitalists making life and death medical decisions on the basis of what will make them the most $$$ is a terrible, no good, very bad idea.
Remember, these are the guys who before the ACA were cancelling policies retroactively as often as they possibly could when policy-holders came down with illnesses such as cancer that were expensive to treat. These are the guys that Harris wants to play a key role in our Medicare?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgz1crsj8jg
Everyone who has been burned by our current health care system can see clearly that for-profit Insurance companies do not make good allies.
The only ones who apparently cannot see this are people who think they are safe; they actually want to fight to keep that system out of fear of losing their special status on a matter that literally involves life and death.
But folks who get “great insurance” through work notice that it gets less great each year, and don’t realize that $$$ paid to insurance companies is less $$$ available that could have gone to them in the form of salary instead. These persons are actually part-time slaves to the insurance companies and they don’t even know it.
And folks who are on Medicare who are against MFA because they are afraid that their OWN benefits will go down — they don’t understand that there is safety in numbers. The best way to keep and improve Medicare is to increase the number of people who are on it (including members of Congress). Voting for MFA is not only the ethically right thing to do, it is also the politically smart thing to do. Can you imagine what would happen in the UK or elsewhere if the politicians wanted to end their national system, and replace it with a for-profit system instead?