Wendell Potter Says "Take The Deal," Kucinich Says "No Way"

[Jefferson23]

* I am very reluctant to go along with Potter, yet, he may be correct here. I am more about fighting until the
bitter end...what are your thoughts folks?


By Ruth Conniff, March 9, 2010
Monday night on the Ed Schultz Show former CIGNA V.P. and insurance-industry whistle blower Wendell Potter came out strongly for pulling together behind the imperfect health insurance reform legislation the President is trying to push through Congress.

Potter's take is significant, because he understands the details of health insurance policy, and the kinds of loopholes industry lobbyists manage to write into law.

As the President goes on his barnstorming tour to rally support for health care reform, I had been wondering about Potter's take on the current plan. Is it worth it, or is it, as Dennis Kucinich calls it, "a giveaway to the insurance industry"?

Back in September, I interviewed Potter when he came to Madison. He expressed worry that the health reform plan Obama was backing was turning out to be far less than it should be. "If he reverses himself on both the public option and the mandate requiring people to buy insurance, that will just be a gift to industry," he said.

The argument that we can’t start from scratch with a whole single payer system is "just bogus," he said. "The President has unfortunately been influenced by industry," Potter added.

remainder in full: http://www.progressive.org/rc030910.html

[cutlassmama]

1. Potter seems to know what is going on

[Jefferson23]

2. Yes, he does when it comes to the details, but it is the politics

of the situation that I am still quite reluctant to agree with him.

[Jefferson23]

3. Medicine in the dark

By Michael Hochman and Danny McCormick
Los Angeles Times
March 10, 2010

Some doctors treat patients with early-stage prostate cancer with radiation. Others favor surgery, while some advocate only close monitoring. Which approach is most successful? No one knows.

When it comes to diabetes management, doctors don’t have answers to key questions: At what point should insulin be started? Is it safe to lower the blood sugar to normal levels? What is the best way to monitor blood sugar control?

Similarly, endocrinologists don’t know what is the best way to treat patients with hyperactive thyroids. Doctors in Europe typically use medications, while those in the U.S. more frequently give radioactive iodine. Only limited evidence is available to guide the decision.

It may seem perplexing that there is so much uncertainty about these relatively simple questions. All of the above treatments have been around for decades. Shouldn’t we have definitive answers by now?

In this week’s issue of the Journal of the American Medical Assn., we report the results of a study that may help explain why we don’t. In the study, we analyzed 328 medication studies recently published in six top medical journals and found that just 32% were aimed at determining which available treatment is best. The rest were either aimed at bringing a new therapy to market or simply compared a medication with a placebo. Whether the therapy was better or worse than other treatments was simply not addressed.

Research involving new therapies is of course crucial for medical progress, but there is also a need for research that compares the effectiveness of the rapidly growing array of existing therapies and approaches.

So why, then, did only a third of medication studies focus on helping doctors use existing therapies more effectively? The answer lies in the fact that pharmaceutical companies fund nearly half of all medication research, including the lion’s share of large clinical trials. For obvious reasons, commercially funded research is primarily geared toward the development of new and marketable medications and technologies. Once these products have won approval for clinical use, companies no longer have incentives to study exactly how and when they should be used.


http://pnhp.org/blog/

[OnyxCollie]

4. Watching Wendell Potter on Bill Moyers last Friday,

it seemed Potter wanted the bill to be passed because he knew how heartless the insurance industry is (Obviously- that's where he's from.) Marcia Angell was also on and warned of lack of will by Congress to fix any of the problems of the bill.

We're going to be screwed no matter what happens.

[nightrain]

5. I thought Angell was far more convincing and thorough, willing

to state the implications and ramificiations of this huge transfer of peoples' wealth to the disease management insurance corporations.

[OnyxCollie]

8. I agree.

Wendell Potter's concern was serious, Marcia Angell warnings were far more dire.

[ShortnFiery]

6. Kucinich is spot on. We will regret passing this shitty bill not unlike the Bankster Bailout ...

and the IWR, it only serves to TAKE money away from the working classes and GIVE it to the Large Corporations.

[Jefferson23]

7. This morning on Democracy Now, Kucinich:

The transcript is not available yet, but you can play the video at the link.


We begin our show in Washington with Congressman Dennis Kucinich who has been at the center of two important debates in the House this week. On healthcare, the Ohio Democrat is threatening to vote against his party’s healthcare reform package because it does not contain a robust public option. With House Speaker Nancy Pelosi scrambling to get enough votes, the fate of the healthcare reform bill could come down to a single vote.

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/3/11/rep_dennis_kucinich_takes_on_democratic

[Jefferson23]

9. The Democrats' scam becomes more transparent

(updated below)

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about what seemed to be a glaring (and quite typical) scam perpetrated by Congressional Democrats: all year long, they insisted that the White House and a majority of Democratic Senators vigorously supported a public option, but the only thing oh-so-unfortunately preventing its enactment was the filibuster: sadly, we have 50 but not 60 votes for it, they insisted. Democratic pundits used that claim to push for "filibuster reform," arguing that if only majority rule were required in the Senate, then the noble Democrats would be able to deliver all sorts of wonderful progressive reforms that they were truly eager to enact but which the evil filibuster now prevents. In response, advocates of the public option kept arguing that the public option could be accomplished by reconciliation -- where only 50 votes, not 60, would be required -- but Obama loyalists scorned that reconciliation proposal, insisting (at least before the Senate passed a bill with 60 votes) that using reconciliation was Unserious, naive, procedurally impossible, and politically disastrous.


But all those claims were put to the test -- all those bluffs were called -- once the White House decided that it had to use reconciliation to pass a final health care reform bill. That meant that any changes to the Senate bill (which had passed with 60 votes) -- including the addition of the public option -- would only require 50 votes, which Democrats assured progressives all year long that they had. Great news for the public option, right? Wrong. As soon as it actually became possible to pass it, the 50 votes magically vanished. Senate Democrats (and the White House) were willing to pretend they supported a public option only as long as it was impossible to pass it. Once reconciliation gave them the opportunity they claimed all year long they needed -- a "majority rule" system -- they began concocting ways to ensure that it lacked 50 votes.

All of that was bad enough, but now the scam is getting even more extreme, more transparent. Faced with the dilemma of how they could possibly justify their year-long claimed support for the public option only now to fail to enact it, more and more Democratic Senators were pressured into signing a letter supporting the enactment of the public option through reconciliation; that number is now above 40, and is rapidly approaching 50. In other words, there is a serious possibility that the Senate might enact a public option if there is a vote on it, because it's very difficult for these Senators to vote "No" after pretending all year long -- on the record -- that they supported it. In fact, The Huffington Post's Ryan Grim yesterday wrote: "the votes appear to exist to include a public option. It's only a matter of will."


http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/

[swilton]

10. Stand Behind Dennis

The new bill empowers the insurance companies and they will become entrenched. This will not be fixed as some who say this is the first step would argue in the near future of this country, because the Republicons will likely take over in 2010 - beyond that, who has a clue.

With the cost of mandating insurance for the poor - we gain ZIP - they like the rest of us will have to buy insurance premiums - and will still have the expenses of copays + deductables with escalating costs and no regulations. Dental, eyeglasses remain out of pocket expenses that are becoming increasingly out of reach.

For example - I as a Federal retiree have what is considered 'good' coverage

Just got my doctor's bills today - for all that I'm paying directly to the doctors for relatively routine (tendonitis and an annual physical with tests), I might as well not have health insurance....I have been paying over $3,600 / year for premiums alone + copays + deductables + dental expenses + eye glasses for a family of 3. We have had minimal/r. minimal health care costs...I'm relatively healthy now with no 'pre-existing' conditions; my 2 sons are thankfully healthy and the older one is not covered now and unemployed. Now that my sons are no longer covered, my premiums are reduced to $1,200 - this still leaves me to pay the premiums, the copays, the deductables, dental expenses, eyeglasses and eye check-ups. If I paid the doctors directly and had not coverage, I would still have to pay for dental, eye glasses, deductables but I would be saving $3,600 on premiums when my children were covered and $1,200 on premiums without dependents - essentially what my doctors' bills are.

[Jefferson23]

12. That is my concern too, if , when, and to what extent will it be "fixed"

And I'm sorry to hear how much more you are paying, it didn't have to continue this way. That is what is so damn frustrating
about all of it.

[slipslidingaway]

11. Potter also said the insurance companies would get around this regulation...

From December 23...

"Last night, former insurance industry executive Wendell Potter appeared on Countdown, claiming that the industry could get around the requirements on the medical loss ratio through accounting tricks..."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=385&topic_id=442074&mesg_id=442074

[Lil Missy]

13. Kucinich has never been on the winning side of anything.