Bill Moyers Journal Features CMD's Wendell Potter

I am truly impressed by this interview and how spot on this segment was. I am a liver transplant patient and I received my transplant through Medicare. I would hate to think what would have happened to me if I had been with Blue Cross when I needed the transplant. I had my insurance through my union IATSE Local 477 Miami, FL. I support Government Health Care. Steven R. Goins

This gentleman was able to strip away the layers of sometime confusing language
that makes understanding the debate difficult for the average person. I will search out the transcripts of the testimony to the committee.
His message needs to be delivered in a wide and loud method.
Thank you Mr. Moyers -We (your viewers) need to see Wise County in more detail,
next to hunger in children in this country lack of the most basic health care is criminal.

Wendell Potter tells it like it is. President Obama are you listening? Read the Luntz paper, "The Language of Healthcare 2009," to learn how health insurance companies manipulate language with emotion in order to play and win on their terms. This interview needs to be broadcast far and wide--but where are the Facebook and twitter buttons? At long last Michael Moore gets insider support for all that his 'Sicko' documentary brought to light. Bill Moyer's interview is a 'must see' if you care an inkling about the future of healthcare in our troubled nation. And who doesn't care? As autism climbs to 1 in 150 births, cancer leads disease-related causes of death in small children and obesity is claiming 30% of our youth, we are sinking deeper and deeper into a morass. This ship we call American healthcare makes the Titanic look like an overturned canoe. Wendell Potter you are to be applauded.

LouAnn
Los Angeles

Mr. Potter's appearance on the Journal was informative and useful. He has the insiders' facts. Most of us, John Q's, out here just have personal stories.
Yet, as I read the on-going, ever-changing, health care squabbles and rants in Congress I fear the lobbyists have done their jobs.
When Mr. Potter appeared before Congress that should have been the end of the arguing. I am sorry I didn't get to see it but I think I pretty much know how it went.
The title of a book, Congress, the Sapless Branch by Sen. Joseph Clark often comes to mind. President Obama while trying to return to the Legislative branch some of their share of governance may wake up and realize he has been dreaming.
I hope it is not too late.

Thank you Mr. Potter for revealing the unscrupulous strategies and tactics of the health insurance industry. As a long time member of an Indiana group advocating for the single payer option (www. hchp.org) I had long suspected as much and it was good to have your verification.

Your congressional testimony and the Interview with Bill Moyers should be required viewing for anyone concerned about healthcare reform. I have emailed Senator Baucus with links to the PBS web site and plan to forward them on also to my congressional representatives. I hope others will do the same.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07102009/watch.html
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07102009/watch2.html

Christina Deegan
Bloomington, Indiana

I am watching Bill Moyers interview with Wendell Potter, it is a real eye opener, he should be on the front page of every newspaper in the country, the guy gave up a cushy job to speak out about the slimy practices of the healthcare industry. Go Wendell!

I am finding it most interesting, what Mr. Wendell Potter has to say about what the insurance industry has been, and is doing. My brother worked with the insurance industry for over 20 years before retiring, and it puzzled me as to why he was still, though retired, parroting the lies we have been hearing about Gov. health care regulations or programs, using scare tactics, such as our moving toward socialism with such Gov. programs, etc.; telling how bad the health care programs are in Canada, England, and other countries. I thought that he had just watched way too much Fox "news" (propaganda and nothing less) and had become brainwashed by the wild eyed nut case Republicans who never tire in talking this way about any Health care reform. I now know, though well educated and well meaning, that my brother was and is brainwashed first of all by the very corporation with which he worked for all those years. I want to thank Mr. Wendell Potter for clearing this up, and helping me to better understand my own brother, regarding health care reform.

I watched the Bill Moyers interview with Wendell Potter and I am sickened. Not by what was actually said in the interview, but what seems to be a horrible trend in the United States these days. Its the fact that large corporations and wall street have our government in their pocket. This is not a conservative/liberal or democrat/republican problem...this is our problem...THE PEOPLES PROBLEM !! What in God's name are we going to do about this. We can't even turn to OUR elected officials to help us. You know, I am 46 years old and this is NOT the country I once knew. We really need to do something drastic to get their attention. You know, when I was in school they taught us about something called a BOYCOTT !! We, the people, need to standup up for our rights. When the Iranian people didn't like what was going on, they took to the streets in protest. I think we need to have a peaceful revolution to let our government know that we DEMAND change in healthcare, we DEMAND accountablility for the last 8 years of criminal acts, and WE DEMAND CHANGE...NOW !!

This illuminating interview also illustrates why so many are signing up for medical tourism, which has huge consequences for the environment and deprives locals of basic care because their doctors cater to spoiled people from wealthy nations.
http://www.ecohearth.com/eco-blogs/small-earth/442-the-hidden-costs-of-medical-tourism.html

Saying that insurers use the same tactics as "tobacco" firms is a touch off-target. Top for profit insurers ARE the cigarette industry in that they own billions of dollars of holdings in top cigarette manufacturers...and, for good measure, in manufacturers of tobacco pesticides. This goes far to explain why such insurers use the cigarette makers' deceptive name for themselves---"Tobacco companies"...as if they just provide some traditionally-used natural plant product.
Such insurers, and complicit chemical firms involved with the pesticides and chlorine contamination of typical cigarettes, and their allies in government and media, are understandably loath to call cigarette makers "the Pesticide-Contaminated, Chlorine-contaminated, Dioxin-delivering, Radiation-delivering Cigarette Industry". (Rads come from certain fertilizers.) To do so would be a long overdue disaster for the insurers and the chemical and fertilizer cartels. If Wendell Potter touched on this scandalous angle, Big Insurance may well have already been packing its bags...making way for Single Payer.

I'm ready for something drastic to be done. Was on the phone with my health insurance provider today for two medical incidents. The first was a bill that they didn't pay because "The doctor is in network but the facility he used wasn't" .. ??? And the other was an emergency room visit to a hospital that was in network but the doctor who saw us was out of network. This is a PPO plan that we pay about $950 a month for. Makes me sick.

My brother was fired from IBM after 18 years of employment (age discrimination). Not only did he lose a career but also his health insurance. He simply could not afford to seek medical service when he experienced unexplained rapid weight loss.

Finally, he sought help at a local free health clinic, but by then the renal cell carcinoma had metastasized throughout his body. He died only a few months later after diagnosis.

no insurance + no health care = late diagnosis and early death

Many thanks to Mr. Wendell Potter for stepping up in this "period of moral crisis" where our health care is being held hostage by a Goliath beholden to profit at the expense of their own customers.

That their product is "health insurance coverage" is incidental and misleading (if not outright corrupt). Big health insurance's self-stated chief business objective is to be profitable. To pay themselves and their investors. Period. Their business model for accomplishing this is to to provide as little actual "health insurance coverage" to their customers (to Americans) as possible.

Clearly health care reform needs all the truth tellers it can get because health insurers are not at all morally conflicted. Competition from a STRONG public option is the only way insurers will operate more cost-effectively and fairly.

Ask "who profits most from current health care proposals and from a public option?"

The answer is clearly big corporations and not the public. Why is a venal, employee-abusive company like Wal-Mart is so actively supporting the measure? It is only to serve themselves.

Wendell Potter "speaks out" about an industry that makes about 3% profit on the health care part of insurance. Potter was just a communications executive and, like most of them, really doesn't know what he is talking about.

Potter says that insurers' expense management and purging actions resulted in collective medical-loss ratios of the seven largest for-profit insurers falling from an average of 85.3 percent in 1998 to 81.6 percent in 2008 and "that translates into a difference of several billion dollars in favor of insurance company shareholders and executives."

Potter cites that Pricewaterhouse result and assumes the cause - but a far more likely cause is the fact that "44% of workers with health benefits were covered by self-insured plans in 1999. That percentage had risen to 55% in 2007." In other words, insurance companies no longer had that risk and expense, thus improving their medical-loss ratios. Businesses funded their own plans.

86% of companies larger than 5,000 employees have become self-insured as have 76% of those with 1,000-4,999 employees. Companies like mine jumped on the bandwagon to reduce healthcare costs because 1) states all had different regulations to follow, and self-funded companies could simply abide by ERISA and 2) businesses saved all the state taxes of 2-6% that insurance companies have to pay on premiums.

What do big corporations get? With a public option, private options will fade away. Users will opt for the public option to save a few bucks on their share of premiums, not realizing what they are giving up in the long run. The costs paid by the big corporations will drop dramatically and their risk and liability as self-insurers disappears.

What does the consumer get with a public option? Look at Medicare - it means unilateral (and often unreasonably) reduced payments to providers. Users have to buy Medigap insurance to cover at least part of the difference between what this public option pays and the care they need. The rest comes out of their pocket or they go without.

Users receive less of the care their doctor says is necessary. As examples, when I was ill, I was sometimes mistaken for a Medicare patient. When my doctor said I needed my two deep wounds monitored, cleansed and treated daily by a home nurse for a couple of months, I was told Medicare would cover a few visits and then, "You have to find someone else to do it for you." I was also told Medicare covered only 20 colostomy bags a month and I would have to wash them out and reuse them. Fortunately, our actual insurance covered what I needed.

Yes, health care definitely needs reform in terms of efficiencies and, most likely, in prohibiting things like hip replacements for octogenarians on the brink of death from cancer. Yes, there should be reasonable options for those with pre-existing conditions and some sort of portability...but none of those fixes requires a "public option."

But no one is discussing that kind of improvement first. Instead, the public will lose out once again while the big-buck corporations profit thanks to their generous funding of both Democrats and Republicans. Beginning t age 65, mandatory end-of-life discussions are incorporated for patients (HR 3200 section 1233) Committees decide on "the most effective treatments" and all medical records must be filed with the government by 2014.

In business, if you unilaterally drop prices before you eliminate waste and fix the processes, then you lose money and go bankrupt, especially if you keep spending money you don't have. You have to fix the costs first. The Feds fail to do that....which is why they have programs that are never fixed and keep going bankrupt...

i want everybody to see this interview. it was awesome.

One thing that few people understand is that most quality health insurance carriers pay 80% to 90% of premium dollars out in benefits. Most insurers are in a competitive environment and know that higher prices mean fewer new clients.

Health care costs are rising and insurance premiums rise along with them. If there is a drought in an area where banana are grown, we don't blame the grocer for the high price.

Insurers are certainly not always right, but if the reason for the increased premiums were excess profits the market would fix the problem. Health insurance companies that only operate in certain states would come into other states and offer lower premiums and "fix the problem."

It has happened with the phone companies and with computers and many other goods and services. When the profits got high enough competition came into the market.

Dear Mr. Potter,

First, I would like to congratulate you on speaking out against the corruption of the health insurance companies. I am a strong supporter of the health care bill, and I recently watched your interview on Bill Moyers’ Journal about these corporations. After viewing the show, I saw your courage and honesty as a sign of hope in the effort for health care reform. I admire your integrity, because I would have found it difficult to speak out if I were in your position. Your inside knowledge of the issue was refreshing, and I felt that your breakdown of the system was eye opening and instrumental in helping me understand the background and motives of the insurance companies.

I couldn’t agree more with your analysis, but I found it shocking the measures the health care industry would take to gain more profit, even if it meant rejecting or letting go of policy holders. In addition, I found your rebuttal to those opposed to the reform bill to be well argued and supported by strong evidence. Although I espouse the capitalist system, it is imperative that people understand that health insurance cannot be dealt in such a manner. It seems that many who see the reform as dangerous to America’s free market economy fail to realize that the health care industry is unique in that it deals with the lives of people, not products. However, the companies treat their policyholders as such - not as human beings, but as numbers in a statistic. Your insight into the hypocrisy and scare tactics of the insurance companies was illuminating, but I still fail to grasp that many Americans, in ignorance, fall for these traps and criticize the “socialism” of a government-run health care policy.

Though I felt that the interview was eye opening, I believe that many Americans are unaware of the problems you addressed. I find myself berated each day for my support of the bill, and am shocked that the arguments I often face have been outlined and rebuked in your interview. I encourage you to continue in your efforts to spread your knowledge, and hope that you are successful in your effort.

Best regards,
Matthew Chan
Stuart Hall High School '11