Whisteblower reveals how health insurers can game new insurance bill

[kpete]

Source: Raw Story

Whisteblower reveals how health insurers can game new insurance bill

By Brad Jacobson
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 -- 10:42 am
!

Though Senate bill cuts 'pre-existing conditions,' it still allows insurance companies to create 'pre-existing' categories to raise rates

The Democrats' healthcare overhaul, billed as a monumental game-changer for Americans' health insurance coverage, provides numerous loopholes for health insurance companies which will allow them to raise rates to protect profit margins, a health insurance whistleblower says.

Wendell Potter, a twenty-year veteran of the insurance industry and former vice president of communications for Cigna, warns that current healthcare legislation does nothing to prevent the insurance industry from continuing its ongoing practice of increasingly shifting healthcare costs to consumers.

A form of bait-and-switch, such practices often set up individuals, families and small businesses for inadequate or unaffordable access and a continued looming threat of financial ruin. The overlooked element, Potter says, is that insurance companies will be able to claim they are reducing premiums by forcing more Americans to pay higher deductibles and offering less coverage.



Read more: http://rawstory.com/2010/01/whisteblower-reveals-health-insurers-game-insurance-bill/

[derby378]

1. Kill the Senate bill. Kill it, kill it, kill it dead.

This is the best way we can honor Teddy Kennedy's legacy at this point.

[mike_c]

2. you know damned well they will do ANYTHING and harm ANYONE...

...to increase corporate profits. Investor owned corporations like insurance companies are like sharks, utterly amoral, absolutely selfish, and guaranteed to cause widespread social harm in order to protect their own profits. An enlightened, civilized society simply does not tolerate such damaging entities in its midst. The only solution is to drive them to extinction.

[daa]

3. This is why Krugman and the rest that want to force this through

are wrong.

[dkf]

4. You can't trust private business with your life.

If everyone who was really sick died instantly they would make a ton of money

[Qutzupalotl]

5. K&R

[Jefferson23]

6. Wendell Potter: Still Time to Fight for Health Care, Grit Tv

Video at link:
http://lauraflanders.firedoglake.com/2010/01/15/wendell-potter-health-care-fight/

By: GRITtv Friday January 15, 2010 10:30 am




Wendell Potter worked for CIGNA health insurers for over 15 years, including a position as head of communications. He left that job, in a 180-degree switch, to fight for the rights of all Americans to affordable health care.

He now serves as Senior Fellow on Health Care at the Center for Media and Democracy, and he joined Laura in studio today to give us a quick update on the health care reform process, explain the so-called “Cadillac tax,” and remind us all that the battle isn’t over yet–there’s still time to fight.

[Roland99]

7. but but but....this bill covers pre-existing conditions! We'll all get to have health insurance!!

:sarcasm:

[nightrain]

8. knr. Excellent post. Thanks. Those in favor of these reforms

would benefit from reading this article carefully. There are no regulatroy bodies who can monitor these greedy corporations.

[Festivito]

9. But, we don't have to pay for campaigns, we trade our lives and health.

Free campaigns, get your free campaigns. Take it now, pay later, whenever we like.

[Vinnie From Indy]

10. Not a single defender of the HCR has addressed this point

I have been posting for weeks that the HCR is a scam and con for this very reason. Anyone that believes the health insurers have not already devised methods and procedures to side-step ANY portion of the HCR are simply IN DENIAL. The fact is that not a single provision will keep health insurance companies from trading lives for profit.