General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWendell Potter: Insurance Companies Want The Mandate Just Not Consumer Protections
Interesting take from an industry insider.
"Wendell Potter spent 20 years as top executive with CIGNA. He wrote Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans. Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has the Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act - with a decision expected in June - the insurance industry whistleblower says the industrys real goal is not to repeal the law, but to defeat Democrats in November.
Wendell Potter: They dont want the bill - quite honestly - to be overturned or repealed. They want the bill to go forward with the individual mandate intact. But what they want to do is to get people to vote out the Democrats who voted for the bill so that theyll have more friends in Congress to strip out the consumer protections.
Potter says for-profit health insurers are killing health health care and their unsustainable system will implode within a few years. Thats the view he got from the CIGNA corporate ladder.
"The higher up that ladder I climbed the more I could see what these companies do to meet Wall Streets profit expectations. And most of the big insurance companies are now for-profit companies. They cancel peoples health insurance when they get sick. They refuse to sell coverage to people who need coverage. They price policies so high that small businesses can no longer afford care. They are spending less and less of our premium dollars on our health care and more and more to reward shareholders and senior executives.
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/wendell-potter-insurance-companies-wa
Faygo Kid
(21,478 posts)Of course insurance companies want to keep the mandate, just as Wall Street doesn't want to end Social Security - just "privatize" it.
kenny blankenship
(15,689 posts)With taxpayer funded subsidies coming from Uncle Sucker to make sure 100% really means 100%?
With the IRS acting as their collection agency?
With the result that their position as middleman, doing nothing but taking people's money without providing a singe material good or service in exchange- no, not even so as much emptying a bedpan! - becomes a Federally protected, profits-guaranteed sinecure from here to the end of the American Republic?
Who wouldn't want customers who either pay you -or die or go to jail?
It's the perfect business plan.
Who WOULDN'T want that, work long years seeding propaganda at thinktanks for that, pay bribes and corrupt public officials for that?
Wendell Potter is who. But he's that rare individual exception, a man of conscience who steps down from a corrupt regime and gives up his place at the money trough because the company of pigs is unbearable.
neverforget
(9,436 posts)joeybee12
(56,177 posts)Series-ly...they want the mandate to survive...it's a goldmine for them.
stlsaxman
(9,236 posts)full swing!
Wendell is one good dude!