Wendell Potter And The Order Of The Profits

Via the always excellent Crooks and Liars, here's another remarkable interview with Wendell Potter, the former CIGNA insurance PR head who I talked about last Sunday. This time, Potter is on MSNBC's The Ed Show, and I'm very glad to see Ed Schultz is taking the time to interview folks like Wendell Potter.



The most intersting part of the interview:

SCHULTZ: Where are the insurance companies making their big profits when it comes to health care? What are they doing to consumers?

POTTER: What they`re doing to consumers is, number one -- they`re shifting a lot more of the financial burden from them and the employers onto the shoulders of working men and women. And they also are very actively looking at claims when they`re submitted. And they`re acting -- taking action to dump people when they`re sick, either in the individual market or in the small groups.

So a lot of small employers no longer can afford health care because of the actions taken by the insurance companies to get rid of them when their employees` claims are a little bit higher than the underwriters expected.

SCHULTZ: Mr. Potter, do you think that there`s a lot of people in the industry that feel the same way you did but just didn`t follow the action you took?

POTTER: Absolutely, I know there are. I`ve gotten just dozens, actually hundreds of e-mails from people that I have worked with in the past. And most of them now former Cigna employees and employees of other companies who know me and have sent me communications to sell me, "I wish I had done that."

There are many who feel the same way.

Go ask any hospital administrator or doctor's office manager or your employer's insurance claims processor. They'll be the first ones to tell you that the point of the industry is always find a way to deny the claim. It's how insurance companies stay in business. They hire people whose job it is to find a way to deny the claim.

Keep that in mind when the Sensible Centrists tell you "Well, we don't need a public option. The private sector can do it better."

How do we know? It's not like we have that choice now, do we?

They keep saying a public plan will put private insurers out of business. Why would that be? Because the public plan wouldn't have to have the overhead? The public option would be held to the same rules as the private plan. But the people would want the public option. Over 100 million people would switch by some accounts, and that of course would put some insurance companies out of business.

Why is that a bad thing again? Would not the public plan need insurance adjusters and actuaries and claims agents too? Or the private insurers could compete by lowering costs. Imagine that.