Wendell Potter Warns: Co-op Kool-Aid Is Bad for Your Health

In a Previous reply, I was taken to task for not being completely clear on who I am. I have an insurance agency that sells Health Insurance. It is the super-majority of our business. I am not a shill for any insurance company and have very little loyalty to any of them, and they feel the same way about me.

I would also like to speculate that if and when the "public option" is replaced with the term "co-op" or "health Insurance exchange", that Mr. Potter will be in support of the bill. I believe that Mr. Potter is biased towards nationalizaiton of the industry and will change his writings to say whatever moves towards that goal.

I am against the "co-op" or "exchange" because it will attract insurance companies to issue policies from States in the States where the laws do not offer consumers the same protections that their own State might. For example, in Illinois, children are covered to age 26, mini-Cobra is 12 months, Mamograms are covered at 100%, birth control pills, fertility, mental health, and rate protection. States will be incented to lower their consumer protection to attract insurance business to their State. Carriers offering policies in States without those benefits If Indiana has less extensive pollution laws, versus Illinois, BP might expand their plant to dump into Lake Michigan from Indiana. Co-ops and exchanges will simply encourage minimization of consumer protection.

I know by a few comments that I am percieved as an angry right-winger. I am not. (Well, check that... I am not a right winger)

States have tried a public option for their healthcare But since it does not cut out all the cost caused by insurers it has not worked out so well. Every country that has National insurence uses a Single payer type plan. A single payer plan for the U S would save $4 trillion in cost over ten years, cut expences per pateint by 50%, Save the States and business untold dollars. I apologize to the congressman but I can not remember his name but he has drafted a single Payer bill, Bill HR676. If you do a search for HR676 you will find the bill along with a few petitions to sign for it.

Single Payer is the only option that will save enough in expences by eliminating the middleman ( insurers) that won't bankrupt the country.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Mr. Potter, from the bottom of my American heart. We don't just need a government-run health care option, we need more people like you, who know true things when they see them and act accordingly. I can only hope that in the long term you will look back and know that you didn't just do the right thing, what you did also made you happier, healthier and wiser -- and kept you in better company.

Wendell,
Once again, you raise some really strong points that America needs to listen to. Your words speak volumes. Having been an insurance insider myself for many years, sitting on many boards, and WAY too many Kool-Aid meetings, I echo your sentiments. If we shout loud enough maybe, just maybe, someone will listen. Seems at the moment that a public option has a majority of supporters in the USA, but the fear tactics raised by opposition are casting a large and growing shadow upon it.

We can not afford to kill reform like we did in the 90's. The entire economy is at stake. The public option is the ONLY thing that has made any sense since in decades. For goodness sake America - it's time to end the BUCA cartel!!!

"nonprofit co-operatives don’t stand a snowball’s chance of competing with those big companies and making a whit of a difference in the lives of the 75 million Americans who either have no insurance or have such marginal insurance they might as well have no insurance."

"Almost all metropolitan areas in the country—and states that are more rural than urban— are now dominated by just two or three insurers. It is impossible for even one of the other large insurers to break into a market dominated by its competitors."

"If CIGNA can’t overcome the huge barriers to entering that market, a nonprofit co-op wouldn’t have a chance."

"To be sure, health insurers take every opportunity to badmouth co-ops, saying they are a backdoor to socialized medicine. Their criticism is disingenuous. Secretly, they would love to have a bill that creates co-ops that won’t work instead of a single-payer or public option that has proven successful in other western countries."

Thank you Mr. Potter for stepping up! I currently work in the industry for one of the big 7 as a claims adjuster in a specialized department. While I will never sit at the position you once did, I see the very practices you speak of every day I go to work. I do my best to educate the public about the industry and how it really works from an insider's perspective, all the while trying to do so without compromising my job or retaliation for speaking out. I never disclose Hipaa, reimbursement policies or company policy and procedure, but I feel we, the American people have a moral responsibility to take care of one another. I'm not talking about materialistic things or an "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine" attitude, but rather personal well being. HEALTH BEFORE WEALTH is the way it should be. I know I personally was not put on this earth to look the other way when someone else is in need. Every day I go to work, I see the claims and names of those whose charges have been reworked for denials, whether in part or whole, but what I don't see are the faces to go with them. It saddens me, that we as a society have such a disconnect for compassion over those we do not know or cannot see. I don't want anymore Kool-Aid! I already have some given to me via my wonderful employer who seems to think, I, a single parent grossing less than 25K a year can afford the HSA they offered me with the $1300 and $3900 deductibles! I want the same coverage they get!