An Open Letter to Nancy-Ann DeParle

by Wendell Potter — August 6, 2009 - 12:33am
  • Topics: Health
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    Remote Area Medical's health care fair in Virginia in 2007ATTN: Nancy-Ann DeParle, Director of the White House Office of Reform

    Dear Nancy-Ann,

    First, forgive me for being familiar, but we were introduced by our mutual friend, Scott Lucas, at a University of Tennessee Torchbearers' reunion in Knoxville about 25 years ago. I'm confident that neither of us could have imagined that we would be advocates for health care reform two and a half decades later.

    I am writing to invite you and, if their schedules permit, President Obama and Secretary Sebelius, to join me next week at a remarkable event in Los Angeles that I am confident you will never forget. I'm also confident it will inspire you to redouble your efforts, if that is possible, to make certain the President has the privilege of signing a meaningful and comprehensive health care reform bill later this year.

    As you may know, I was an executive at two of the country's largest health insurance companies, Humana and CIGNA. As you may also know, I recently testified before the Senate Commerce Committee about how insurance companies confuse their customers and dump the sick -- all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors.

    I left my job a few months after seeing firsthand the consequences of the actions insurance companies take every day to meet those investors' relentless profit expectations. I saw it in the faces of the thousands of people who had been waiting for hours in the rain to get care many of them so desperately needed but couldn't afford because they were either uninsured or underinsured. They had been waiting in long lines since long before daybreak to get care from doctors who were volunteering their time to treat them in animal stalls at a county fairground in Wise County, Virginia, not far from where you and I grew up. Other volunteers had worked for days beforehand to scrub and disinfect those animal stalls and to set up tents that would be used as additional treatment sites. Many of the people who came for care slept in their cars in the fairgrounds parking lot for two days or more to be assured of getting inside the gates.

    The organization that made it possible for those folks to get the care they needed was Knoxville-based Remote Area Medical (RAM). RAM's original mission was to provide free care to people who lived in remote villages in third world countries. Soon after it was founded, about the time you and I first met, RAM's founder, a British citizen and former actor named Stan Brock, realized that there was a great and growing need for his organization's services all across America.

    RAM has been providing free care in Wise County once a year for 10 years. When I went to the eighth annual "expedition," as RAM calls these events, in July 2007, I was a curious insurance company executive. When I went back last month I was an advocate for comprehensive health care reform and a critic of the many health insurance practices that make it necessary for people to stand in line, in the dark and in the rain, to get care in animal stalls.

    The expedition in Los Angeles, to be held at the Forum where the Lakers used to play, will be the biggest one RAM has ever held in the United States and the first one in a major city. It will start at 6 a.m. on Tuesday, August 11 and extend over eight days, far longer than the three days of the Wise County expedition.

    I apologize if this seems like short notice. If you and President Obama and Secretary Sebelius cannot attend, please send someone else from the administration, if for no other reason than to meet Stan Brock, one of the most remarkable people you will ever meet, the volunteer doctors and other health care professionals, and, most importantly, a few of the people who will be standing in line to get care.

    A final note: I have been called a whistleblower for speaking out against the health insurance industry. I see myself as someone who is simply trying to shine a light on industry practices the industry would rather not be made public. I feel that I am at long last living up the Tennessee Volunteer credo that is inscribed on our Torchbearer plaques: "He that beareth a torch shadoweth himself to give light to others."

    Please join me in Los Angeles next week to shed light on the plight that an ever growing number of Americans are finding themselves in as a result of insurance industry practices that should be illegal.

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    consumer education

    Submitted by Fritha Dinwiddie (not verified) on August 11, 2009 - 9:50pm.

    I have good friends who are good people and who wouldn't hurt a soul. But they are so afraid of what they're hearing about changes to health care. Like some of the people shown in town hall and other community meetings, they fear "socialism," yet accept medicare and social security benefits without a second thought. They don't understand that universal health care is not synonymous with nationalized health care. I've worked as a dietitian in acute and long-term care for 20 years and have a master's in health policy. I understand the desperate need for reform and I speak the language of the citizens. Why can't we send people like me into the trenches to listen to people, get yelled at, explain the proposed legislation, listen to original ideas? There's no way elected officials can cover the masses of Americans who just want answers. Health care is too important a piece of our economy for reform to fail this time. If we fix health care, we fix almost everything.

    LA and Healthcare reform

    Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on August 11, 2009 - 5:39pm.

    And you would have us believe that this event is not timed for the news cycle and to influence the debate......puhleeeze

    LA RAM Event

    Submitted by Lisa in Indiana (not verified) on August 12, 2009 - 5:45pm.

    No doubt the LA event is a calculated move that has been planned since 2003
    (see http://www.ramusa.org/expeditions/schedule.htm and http://www.ramusa.org/expeditions/past2007.htm). Sneaky.

    State Insurance Regulators Asleep at the Switch

    Submitted by Louis A. Carliner (not verified) on August 11, 2009 - 4:45pm.

    With life insurance, most state have a two-year contestibility (one year in a few states) clause that after two years prohibit recision of a policy due to errors in the application unless gross fraud is found. Why, oh, why, is the same not done with health insurance products? The Republicans claim that allowing health insurance policies to be offered across state lines would provide "competition". However, unless policy product offerings are standardized, as was done with Medicare Supplement policies (with the collection of A through L choices), a race to the bottom will ensue, and the results will be an assortment of "garbage" products! It was the state insurance regulators, together with Congress that came up with the scheme to clean up the Medicare Supplement Insurance product offering mess back in the late 70's to early 80's.

    THANK YOU, THANK YOU

    Submitted by Jeanne Stewart Jemison (not verified) on August 11, 2009 - 4:22pm.

    As a physician who has treated patients at all economic levels, with and without insurance, I can not say how much your voice is needed. Thank you for speaking out!! I hope others like you will have a similar conversion, get the big picture, and begin to take action that will give them peace when they put their heads on their pillows at night.

    So glad NPR broadcast your message.

    Health Care questions...

    Submitted by 6damon9 (not verified) on August 11, 2009 - 4:20pm.

    I tried to attend David Wu's town hall meeting in Portland, OR on 8/11/09, but there was only room for 60. I was disappointed that this important event was held in such a small venue.
    So I sent my questions via email:
    1) Private "Health Care Insurance" is, at best, an inefficient and superfluous billing system. More typically, it is a financial racket, skimming profits off the top of health care transactions, without adding any value. Why aren't the proponents of reform highlighting this aspect of the debate?
    2) We do need a coherent, effective universal health care system, but we can't afford to finance it through more foolish deficit spending. The funding should come from existing revenue (an oversimplification, ignoring redirecting private cash flows or implementing more taxes, but valid for the purpose of this question); we need to set priorities and live within our means. Therefore, why are we not discussing the obscenely large proportion of revenue currently going to military and defense-related spending in this context? That is, wouldn't it be prudent to redirect some of these funds to real health care (for the non-military US citizens, since the military personnel are already covered)?
    3) If the private health care insurance system is "good" then why doesn't the federal government use it for all the federal employees (including Congress, and the military & veterans, etc.) that have government-provided health care?
    4) How long can this nation survive on its current course? There are many warning signals – financial, economic, social, political – flashing bright red. If we can not do the right thing with health care will we have a sustainable socio-political system?

    I’ll be surprised if I receive more than a form letter response to these (politically naive) questions, so in case you’re actually contemplating them here are the short answers – which, of course, you’ll probably not hear from a politician:

    1) Because the current system is financially beneficial to most of the key players, despite where they profess to stand. Besides, they are covered.
    2) Because the current system is financially beneficial to most of the key players, despite where they profess to stand. Besides, the military lobby is more powerful (and more dangerous?) than the 47 million uninsured.
    3) Are you kidding?
    4) Don’t worry – we should be able to keep this game going as long as we can keep you folks engaged in the contentious and entertaining distractions that we’ve substituted for mature discourse/debate and rational policy-making.

    Healthcare reform

    Submitted by FIONA (not verified) on August 11, 2009 - 10:44am.

    May I suggest that you invite the President and by association the White House press corp to one of these healthcare fairs.

    Prez needs to fight for public option explicitly

    Submitted by Wendy Fleet (not verified) on August 8, 2009 - 3:24am.

    Dear Wendell,

    I sent the following to all my activist friends hoping to get the word out about your key info.

    I hope you'll spread the word about medical-loss-ratios, the odious detail that finally pushed me off the Sickened Cliff into a free fall of dumbfounded disgust.

    I'm amazed that people in these town brawls are so violently eager to use their premiums to pay CEO Ron Williams of Aetna's $24-million-dollar annual compensation. I'm happy for them to do that, but I'd like the choice, the public option, not to buy the gold-rimmed luncheon plates on the Aetna jet.

    I'm amazed that people are so virulently eager to have Wall Street between them and their doctor. The medical-industrial-complex insurance corporations are only rewarded for collecting your premiums and then *not* paying your claims. It's called medical-loss-ratio. If a health-scam corporation starts paying too great a ratio of medical losses (aka patient claims), its stock gets punished. (I learned this from the wonderful Wendell Potter, whistleblower, ex-Cigna PR chief.)

    I think if people knew more and weren't responding to fortune-cookie propaganda, there'd be no question that they'd demand a public option to at least slow the juggernaut of the built-in rapacious greed-for-profit of the current gold-rimmed-plates Let's Dupe the Sheeple arrangement.

    According to Joe Califano, President Lyndon Johnson said, "I will fight for Medicare as long as I have breath in my body." We need this passion in the current Democrats.

    Health Care in the USA

    Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on August 7, 2009 - 8:40pm.

    The one sure way to drive down health care costs in the this country is the contrary of having every body insured. Yes no body should have health insurance. Doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies can keep raising the cost of their products because of the insurance industry. If no body is insured these costs will plummet. The way to have nobody insured is to pass a law outlawing health insurance. Persons should only be allowed to purchase catastrophic insurance to pay hospitalization and care for terminal illnesses.

    The Rip off Called Healthcare

    Submitted by garcs (not verified) on August 10, 2009 - 7:55pm.

    My friend was admitted to a hospital emergency for Chest pain and was ultimately released after 3-4 days with stent in one of his arteries. The Hospital Bill was more than 70,000 dollars. This did not include the bills of the doctor, cardiologist, lab tests, X-ray and emergency doctor which probably amounted to additional almost 12,000/-. The insurance company paid the contracted almost $45000 and the balance of deductible and co pay of almost 5000/- was paid by patient. How can you justify such outrageous bills??

    In Thailand you can get this kind of procedure for less than $2000/- , In India for $600/- and as per National Public Radio, in Japan the ordinary per room charges in the hospital is only $10/- per night.
    In USA even with generous overheads and profits, the bill should not have been more than $7000- $10,000. Some body should do work/cost study on each and every procedure in the health care industry. We all end of paying for this rip off. Similarly, the research costs of a drug are not more that 15% of big Pharma budget. Therefore they should only charge an extra 15-25 percent. Instead these guys charge you almost 500% to 1000% more than the actual cost of manufacturing and overheads.