As seen in an introduction to his interview with Bill Moyers that is well worth watching, Potter testified before Congress:

Recently it became abundantly clear to me that the industry’s charm offensive, which is the most visible part of a duplicitous and well-financed PR and lobbying campaign, may well shape reform in a way that benefits Wall Street far more than average Americans.

The industry and its backers are using fear tactics, as they did in 1994, to tar a transparent and accountable, publicly accountable health care option as, quote, “government-run health care.” What we have today, Mr. Chairman, is Wall Street-run health care that has proven itself an untrustworthy partner to its customers, to the doctors and hospitals who deliver care and to the state and federal governments that attempt to regulate it.

In the course of his interview with Bill Moyers he talks about his “conversion”, the duplicity of the industry and why we should be surprised if any meaningful change is made by Washington insiders, the Obama administration included.

Check out the second part of the interview on YouTube, the full interview with Bill Moyers, the introduction to the Potter interview, Wendell Potter’s recent article at PR Watch on the health care industry vs. reform, and his bio.

Among other things, Potter explains that the health care industry ran an organized campaign to discredit Michael Moore’s Sicko because they viewed it as dangerous.

BILL MOYERS: Was [Sicko] true? Did you think it contained a great truth?

WENDELL POTTER: Absolutely [it] did.

BILL MOYERS: What was it?

WENDELL POTTER: That we shouldn’t fear government involvement in our health care system. That there is an appropriate role for government and it’s been proven in the countries that were in that movie.

You know, we have more people who are uninsured in this country than the entire population of Canada. And that if you include the people who are underinsured, more people than in the United Kingdom. We have huge numbers of people who are also just a lay-off away from joining the ranks of the uninsured, or being purged by their insurance company, and winding up there.

And another thing is that the advocates of reform or the opponents of reform are those who are saying that we need to be careful about what we do here, because we don’t want the government to take away your choice of a health plan. It’s more likely that your employer and your insurer is going to switch you from a plan that you’re in now to one that you don’t want. You might be in the plan you like now.

But chances are, pretty soon, you’re going to be enrolled in one of these high deductible plans in which you’re going to find that much more of the cost is being shifted to you than you ever imagined.

This is an important point: even if you currently have good coverage and/or benefit from the healthcare system, there is no guarantee that you won’t be ambushed by your insurer in the future.

Also worth reading is Trudy LIeberman’s interview with Wendell Potter in the Columbia Journalism Review, which touches on deficiencies of the media and the ways that corporate PR people manage relationships with journalists to get favorable stories published.

I can’t recall a reporter ever probing how insurers manage to meet Wall Street’s expectations through medical management and claims practices, which are key ways to manipulate the medical loss ratio and dump unprofitable accounts. Not once was I asked by a reporter what happens to people who work for small and mid-sized companies that get “purged” by insurers because their employees’ claims were causing the insurer’s medical loss ratio to move in the wrong direction from an investor’s point of view. No one ever asked me about the human consequences of satisfying Wall Street. Most reporters are happy to do a superficial job.

It seems to me that the business of making money by denying treatment to people is fundamentally flawed and that health insurance should be left to nonprofit organizations or the government, entities which are not directly accountable to Wall Street. This makes me a big fan of the Chaffee People’s Clinic.

When my sister lost her job last spring, she was turned down by Kaiser to continue her policy because her husband had controlled hypertension and elevated cholesterol. She now has a $10,000-deductible plan. We save money now that my parents Blue Cross plan was cancelled.

59 % of physicians now would support a single-payer system. Administration and profits make up about 30% of private insurance costs. Insurance companies do not provide or coordinate care; they just deny care, making choice in plans irrelevant. Plans do not encourage preventive care because the average insured person changes plans every two years.

Health spending per enrollee for comparable benefits grew at a rate of 7.3 % a year under private insurance, compared to 4.6 % under Medicare. Medicare’s administrative costs at 3% are well below the overhead of private insurers. This may change as the privately operated Medicare plans get bigger subsidies from the taxpayers than traditional government-run Medicare, about 17 % more for fee-for-service plans often with less coverage.

HR 676 was introduced to implement a single-payer health care system that covers all Americans regardless of preexisting condition or employment status and preserves choice by including all licensed providers. Financing is through sliding-scale taxation rather than employer mandates. The cost of this plan would be less than what we are currently paying with many uninsured now and worse health outcomes than most developed countries. It has gained the support of 94 US representatives, many unions, state legislative bodies, cities, counties, faith groups and other organizations that believe that basic health care should be a right.

Sen. Daischle does not feel that it is politically feasible to push the single-payer system despite its advantages, as I found out at the recent Health Care Reform Summit in Denver. The public option must be maintained to cut costs and insure the uninsured. Massachusetts has found it too costly to extend insurance significantly with its employer mandates.

If Republicans in Congress are stopping any healthcare reform if it contains a public option, they should do the right thing and drop their own public plan and get their own private insurance.

Health Care for All Colorado has a very detailed single-payer plan for Colorado that may be introduced in the next legislature.

Health care reform comments can be sent to the Obama transition team at Change.gov.

Linda Mulka, MD
Buena Vista, CO