When Insurers Put Profits Before People

NYTimes.com: How an insurance company let a teenager die, then spared no expense to save itself.

AHIP Lobbyist To GOP: Don't Give "Comfort To The Enemy" On Health Care

Sam Stein fills us in on what's happening at AHIP's annual State Issues Conference:

A top lobbyist for the major private insurance industry trade group, America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), urged Congressional Republicans to not even consider helping Democrats pass health care reform lest they aid an 'enemy who is down.'

Steve Champlin, a lobbyist for the Duberstein Group who represents AHIP, declared that the road to a bipartisan health care reform bill was, essentially, dead. And he urged GOP members to keep it that way.

"There is absolutely no interest, no reason Republicans should ever vote for this thing. They have gone from a party that got killed 11 months ago to a party that is rising today. And they are rising up on the turmoil of health care," said Champlin. "So when they vote for a health care reform bill, whatever it is, they are giving comfort to the enemy who is down."

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Wendell Potter: Without a Public Option, Bill is Giveaway to Insurers

Wendell Potter tells Ed Schultz that Max Baucus' bill is a joke.

During a hearing of the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee Rep. Mazie Hirono asks Wendell Potter, Former Communications VP/Spokesperson for CIGNA, and J. James Rohack, MD, President of the American Medical Association (AMA), about the idea of health co-ops, What Potter calls the Baucus "Insurance Industry Profit Protection and Enhancement Act".

Wendell Potter offers his opening remarks:

Hat tip to Video Cafe

Wendell Potter discusses the Bogus Baucus Bill on the Ed Show

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Wendell Potter Says 'The Fat Cats Are Winning,' This is A 'Pig of a Bill.'

Former CIGNA PR chief Wendell Potter is very, very angry over Obama's movement away from true healthcare reform:

"So I hope the president's aides are buying lots of lipstick. He'll need all he can get to put on that pig of a bill."

Read it all and watch the video at Crooks and Liars

Wendell Potter Says 'The Fat Cats Are Winning,' This is A 'Pig of a Bill.'

Not only is Obama clearly ready to throw the public option overboard, he is embracing the requirement that we all be forced to buy insurance from private insurers. That means your tax dollars and mine will be used to pay subsidies to the big insurers to provide coverage to people who can't afford to buy their policies, because the big insurers charge far more than they should because Wall Street investors demand that they do.

One of the people who undoubtedly talked Obama away from the public option and into supporting this mandate is his new BFF, Aetna CEO Ron Williams. Williams, who made $65 million off of Aetna's policyholders' premiums over the past two years and who was the mastermind behind Aetna's shedding of eight million members a few years ago to meet Wall Street's demands, is the insurance industry's leading champion of requiring us all to buy insurance. And, of course, without a public option, we'll all be forced to buy coverage from Aetna or one of the other private insurers.

According to a recent article in Forbes, Williams has been to the White House a half a dozen times recently to advise the president and his staff on health care reform. That same article quoted a Wall Street analyst as saying that Aetna likely will dump about 600,000 policyholders during the coming months to satisfy its investors' unrelenting profit demands.

During his speech in Montana, Obama talked a lot of trash about the insurance industry. Don't be fooled by that tough talk. It's all part of a strategy to try get us to believe we'll get the reform he promised during the campaign. Industry leaders are in fact delighted he's denouncing their behavior, because they believe most of his supporters -- who were hopeful the stars might finally have aligned for real reform -- will be fooled into thinking the reform bill that reaches his desk will benefit them more than the special interests with their armies of lobbyists. And they know the nonprofit cooperatives Sebelius and Gibbs are now trying to sell us on don't have a prayer of succeeding. The big for-profits will never let them get off the ground in any meaningful way.

Sadly, I believe the fat cats are winning and that the bill Congress sends the president will be one that gives an industry with an unsustainable business model a new lease on life and a guarantee of unprecedented future profits.

So I hope the president's aides are buying lots of lipstick. He'll need all he can get to put on that pig of a bill.

Source: Crooks and Liars

2,000 Americans get Health Care in animal pens at a fairground

Former insurance executive Wendell Potter told Bill Moyers that he left the insurance industry after attending the Wise County health fair where he saw people being treated in animal stalls and contrasted it with the gold-plated silverware found on the corporate jets he flew. It rekindled something in Potter's conscience, and he decided to testify about insurance industry abuses at Congressional hearings on health care reform.

People are still being treated in animal stalls. The Wise County free health care clinic is being held this weekend. So far, nearly 2,000 Appalachian residents, all of whom can't afford to be treated at doctor's offices due to the lack of affordable and accessible heath insurance, have been treated in the animal stalls of the Wise County Fairgrounds. Here are some photos from the fair:

Here is a link to an article in the Kingsport Times-News about it.

Imagine that you are a diabetic who should be seeing a doctor every 3 or 4 months to avoid complications that could lead to blindness or amputations - but you don't have insurance, so you wait and see one of the doctors donating time to check you in an animal barn at the local fairgrounds once a year... And if you are not lucky enough to live in Wise County where this health fair is held annually, maybe you have to go more than a year for checkups.

And this is in the United States of America - not some 3rd world country.

We need Universal Single Payer health insurance. I think citizens need to continue fighting for that and let the politicians do the compromising. In the end we have to make sure they know that a strong, Medicare like public option is our line in the sand.

Bill Moyers Journal: CIGNA Chief Admits: Michael Moore's SICKO "Hit The Nail On The Head"

It's a blockbuster admission that we already knew: The health care insurance industry was petrified that Americans would see Michael Moore's Sicko and realize that government-run health care was something that would be good for citizens and lead to better health outcomes.

CIGNA Public Relations Chief turned whistleblower Wendell Potter said the words to Bill Moyers that no insurance company wanted said out loud in this country:

BILL MOYERS: You were also involved in the campaign by the industry to discredit Michael Moore and his film "Sicko" in 2007. In that film Moore went to several countries around the world, and reported that their health care system was better than our health care system, in particular, Canada and England. [..]

So what did you think when you saw that film?

WENDELL POTTER: I thought that he hit the nail on the head with his movie. But the industry, from the moment that the industry learned that Michael Moore was taking on the health care industry, it was really concerned.

BILL MOYERS: What were they afraid of?

WENDELL POTTER: They were afraid that people would believe Michael Moore.

Of course, we knew this. We've been screaming it for years. Still, it's difficult to pierce through that Beltway bubble to those politicos that are still hemming and hawing as the insurance industry insiders fill their campaign coffers.

More from Moyers:

BILL MOYERS JOURNAL has covered the public option that appears to be on the table and the idea of a single-payer plan which is not. Find out more about those plans and all the iterations under consideration below.

>>Compare the current plans. The Public Option The public option, according to Robert Reich, is a government-run non-profit insurance pool, that, by virtue of its size and bargaining power, could control costs and offer people who are either uncovered by, or unhappy with, private insurers an affordable alternative path to health care. Medicare is an example of a public option, notes Reich, with one important caveat — the Medicare drug benefit bill passed during the Bush administration expressly forbids Medicare from using its size to negotiate for lower costs which would be an important strategy for keeping prices down.

Whence Single-Payer? Dr. David Himmelstein and Dr. Sidney Wolfe told Bill Moyers on the JOURNAL that President Obama isn't considering a popular plan — single-payer. In a recent town-hall meeting in New Mexico, President Obama said switching to single-payer would be too disruptive.

The term "single-payer" generally means a system in which rather than having private, for-profit insurance companies, the government runs one large non-profit insurance organization. That organization pays all the doctor, drug and hospital bills — it is the "single-payer" of all medical bills. In most single-payer plans, every American would be enrolled and would pay into the fund through taxes.

Advocates argue that a single-payer system would pay for itself, saving huge amounts of money in administrative costs. The U.S. currently pays a higher percentage of health dollars for administration than any other nation.

The U.S. also ranks highest in total cost of care, but according to a recent report by the Commonwealth Fund, ranks last among industrialized countries "in preventing deaths through use of timely and effective medical care." In a recent FRONTLINE report comparing the health care systems of five other capitalist democracies, "Sick Around the World," WASHINGTON POST reporter T.R. Reid notes that, "The World Health Organization says the U.S. health care system rates 37th in the world in terms of quality and fairness. All the other rich countries do better than we do, and yet they spend a heck of a lot less."

Source: Crooks and Liars

Watch the video of the Moyers show: Wendell Potter on Profits Before Patients