The evils of unfettered, unbridled, for-profit health care providers.
In a story posted on Raw Story.com, a retired health insurance executive, with twenty years experience with Cigna, testified in a U.S. Senate hearing that insurance companies willfully confuse customers and get rid of those who are sick.
"[T]hey confuse their customers and dump the sick, all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors," former Cigna senior executive Wendell Potter told senators at a hearing on health insurance Wednesday before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
Dr. Steve B over at Daily Kos also has a posting on this issue.
Once again Trudy Lieberman has a great story, not only about how the health insurance industry really works, but also how its PR campaigns work and how they count on lazy journalists.
The pieces posted above give us the industry's working formula to maximize its profits by ditching some customers and denying coverage to others.
The industry's ultimate goal: Money: Pleasing Wall St. investors.
Core ideology: Money: The free market works.
How to achieve the goal:
Confuse clients
Dump the sick
Depend on lazy journalists
Count on Congress members who are aligned with the industry and who believe a voodoo free market economy can work for health care.
This is the toxic brew we have been stuck with since President Bill Clinton left office. No wonder 72-85% of Americans support a government run health care option.
If everyone were to know about the revelations below, 98% of us would want a public option. (The 2% who would say no would be right wing Republicans like Sarah Palin, Rick Perry, Mark Sanford, Bobby Jindhal, John Cornyn, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Rush Limbaugh, G.W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove. All are either very wealthy and/or they have Rolls Royce level health care coverage and none care about the plight of Joe and Jane the constituents.)
How insurance companies ditch their sick customers.
"They look carefully to see if a sick policyholder may have omitted a minor illness, a pre-existing condition, when applying for coverage, and then they use that as justification to cancel the policy, even if the enrollee has never missed a premium payment," Potter added. "(D)umping a small number of enrollees can have a big effect on the bottom line."
Why have journalist become so lazy? Why are they content with merely publishing prepared statements made by disingenuous insurance company executives?
According to Wendell Potter, the retired insurance executive who testified in the U.S. Senate:
Yes. For one thing, the media has lost interest in writing stories similar to the managed care horror stories they wrote in the 1990s, when insurers and employers were forcing people into HMOs. There is less coverage of the consequences to people resulting from insurance company practices. A lot of critical reporting is just not being done. Most reporters willingly accept a prepared statement that company executives and lawyers have written, and they feel their obligation is over.
Why the superficial coverage?
They wrote brief stories for investors, but wouldn't go into the details of the important facts and numbers-such as a company's medical loss ratio, which tells the percentage of premium dollars that the insurers pay out in claims. This is a closely watched measure by investors and Wall Street analysts, because it tells them how well a for-profit company is meeting investors' earnings expectations.
Nor are journalists interested in the human consequences of Wall St. pleasing for-profit health care insurance. Why?
I can't recall a reporter ever probing how insurers manage to meet Wall Street's expectations through medical management and claims practices, which are key ways to manipulate the medical loss ratio and dump unprofitable accounts. Not once was I asked by a reporter what happens to people who work for small and mid-sized companies that get "purged" by insurers because their employees' claims were causing the insurer's medical loss ratio to move in the wrong direction from an investor's point of view. No one ever asked me about the human consequences of satisfying Wall Street. Most reporters are happy to do a superficial job.
At the infamous 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner at which comedian Stephen Colbert roasted President Bush, he was spot on when observed that journalists had become mere stenographers.
Finally, the interviewer, Trudy Lieberman, asked Wendell Potter if the members of Congress who are against the public option are aligned with the health care industry.
Are the members of Congress who are most vocally against a public plan aligned with the industry?
WP: Yes. One of the things they can exploit is to talk about how a government-run plan would wreck the free market system in health care. Many members of Congress believe the free market can still work with health care.
TL: Can it?
WP: There's no evidence that it has worked since the Clinton plan failed.
There you have it folks. The free market does not work where health care is concerned. As if we didn't know this already.
So, Republicans and sell-out Blue Dog Dems (i.e. Repugs Lite), tell me again why government run health care is such a rotten, horrible idea. The expert said the free market does not work. Joe and Jane the Consumer/Patient/Constituent are telling you the free market does not work. Actually it hurts us more than it helps us. Worse, it is bankrupting and killing some of us.
Now, let's try this again. Why is government run health care such a bad, un-American idea?
I think the time is right for us to call our Senators and give 'em a little ol' wake up call.
Senator Kay Hutchison: 202-224-5922 Senator John Cornyn: 202-224-2934
If MNSBC's Hardball Chris Matthews' prediction is correct, health care reform will happen in October. Lawmakers who vote against it or attempt to obstruct it will be fired in November 2010 and 2012.
It is up to us to make sure health care reform means a public option. We know damned well we cannot, never, ever depend upon the profit mongers to deliver the health care we need and rightfully deserve.
Right now things are looking hopeful because there is a counter block of 120 members in the House that will not vote for any health care bill coming from the Senate that does not include a strong public option.
Get to work Senators. We're paying your salaries and we want results.
Speaking of which, why was the hearing on Consumer Choices and Transparency in the Health Insurance Industry in which Wendell Potter testified so sparsely attended? Surely the entire lot of you is not in the tank with big insurance. Heaven help those who are b/c we constituents are angry, fed up and we're learning an awful lot about big insurance, lobbyists, and you pimped out politicians.
