Wendell Potter: Baucus' Health Care Bill Needs Urgent Care

I suggest we need to redefine the common notions associated with healthcare. Obviously, healthcare is not just being treated by a doctor. Good nutrition and physical exercise are forms of healthcare. National defense is also a form of healthcare. We need to protect our bodies from harmful bacteria, viruses, terrorists, and invading armies. If we, as a nation, are willing to fund national defense initiatives to protect American lives than we should also be willing to federally fund decent healthcare for all Americans to protect their lives.

As a nation, we are obviously willing to spend tremendous human and monetary resources to defend us from external forces. Just considering the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- we have lost many lives; many more have been physically and mentally injured; we have spent billions of dollars on waging the wars; and we have diverted precious human and physical resources away from more economically productive endeavors. In the Iraq war alone, over 4,000 soldiers have died and over 30,000 American soldiers have been injured. The military expenditure of human resources and monetary capital has been terribly expensive.

By a conservative estimate, the United States military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost our nation well over $900 billion and the cost is steadily increasing. However, the actual cost is largely a secondary consideration mainly because our nation has been galvanized to defend ourselves from terrorist attacks. We are very motivated in our battle to save American lives from external forces. And because lives are at stake, our national defense has been performed without any notion of budget deficit neutrality.

National defense is a form of national healthcare. We are quite willing to spend whatever is needed to protect us from external threats. Unfortunately, as a nation, we’re unwilling to protect all of our citizens by providing healthcare for them. Each year many people in this country die because they don’t have healthcare coverage at all or because they don’t have adequate healthcare coverage. Two reputable studies report we currently have either 20,000 or 45,000 people in the US dying each year because of a lack of healthcare coverage (Institute of Medicine study – “Analysis on the Impact of Uninsurance on Mortality” at http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/411588_uninsured_dying.pdf and Harvard study - “Health Insurance and Mortality in U.S. Adults” at http://www.ncpa.org/pdfs/2009_harvard_health_study.pdf). If we average the total deaths per year from the 2 studies, that’s 32,500 people dying each year just because they don’t have healthcare coverage.

To many of us, the fact that 32,500 people needlessly die each year is a flat statistic. Please allow me to animate it. The number of people in the US dying each year for lack of healthcare coverage is approximately the same as the number of students enrolled at one of our large universities. If this degree of mortality occurred at universities over 8 years, it’s like all University of Iowa students died one year; all University of Utah students died the next year; all Boston University students died the next year; all University of Tennessee students died the next year; all George Mason University students died the next year; all Colorado State University students died the next year; all University of Kansas students died the next year; and all San Diego State University students died the next year. This represents more than 230,000 people dying in 8 years simply because they didn’t have healthcare coverage. This is a disaster and it is preventable!

President Obama and many other elected representatives have stated they want a healthcare reform bill that will not increase the federal deficit. Given the annual death toll from insufficient healthcare coverage, how can we ever begin to consider that this problem should only be solved in a manner that doesn’t increase government spending?!? Have we as a people and our democratically-elected representatives lost our minds? I’m outraged at this type of mean-spirited solution. We need to stop the needless suffering and dying in this country by supporting decent healthcare coverage for all – even if we have to spend some money to do it. It’s worth it.

How funny, Mr. Potter had no problem padding his pocket for 20 years with that evil insurance company money. Now he readily attacks this industry. Wonder how much money you are being paid here on the light side (since supposedly insurance companies are the dark side). Anyone who advocates government run healthcare, obviously has never lived under it. I wonder what kind of healthcare insurance Mr. Potter has now and if he would give that up for the public option. I would bet not.

Thank you, Mr. Potter, for all your thoughtful work on behalf of real health care reform. I appreciate your excellent letter backing Senator Rockefeller's ammendments to the Baucus/gang of six bill. That bill, however, is an obscenity, that represents no kind of reform in the sense that it might benefit the American people whatsoever, and it has at its core the most absurd premise that there could be any sort of bipartisan support for any kind of real reform. The democrats need to accept that there will be no bipartisan support for anything that constitutes reform and move on even under threats of insurers and their lobbyists.

Mr. Potter, I know you acknowledge that reform demands a public option and that mandatory enrollment in private insurance is a flawed plan. I wonder if you will consider my idea, which is rougly this. Allow anyone under 65 to buy Medicare by paying premiums. My idea is to charge something over the true cost (as determined by the Congressional Budget Office and/or the GAO) for those who can afford it, I think about 20%, to help supplement premiums for those of lower incomes where it could be combined with tax credits to make it affordable. Expanding the Medicare system would avoid the creation of a brand new bureaucracy where an efficient one already exists. I would buy this in a minute for myself. There's still a role for private insurers to offer Medicare supplements as they do now.

I tend to agree with another commenter that a sanction for repeated abuses by a for-profit insurer, might be liquidation and conversion to non-profit status, which would be a step toward getting non-profits into the competitive mix. That's a pretty strong incentive to shareholders to keep the place clean.

It really is unbearable -- sickening -- to think of how this Finance Committee Insurance Corporation Greed Enhancement Bill will just shovel perpetual cash to the Wealthcare Corps.

I'm sending the following to The Ed Show. Dear Ed, Wonderful whistleblower Wendell's new Baucus Bill Needs Urgent Care is an immediate emergency MUST-read. Your viewers should read it and, after weeping, phone Chairman Baucus demanding politely but urgently that he support a true Competitive Public Choice (no triggers, no co-ops) and funded regulations with teeth. Email The White House too.

The shock and woe that the toothless Baucus Hog-Trough Bill could clearly make things much much worse is chilling. Whew. I can not bear it.