Former Healthcare (Cigna) Executive Tells All

[deception]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/26/us-healthcare-obama-barack-change

Wendell Potter can remember exactly when he took the first steps on his journey to becoming a whistleblower and turning against one of the most powerful industries in America.

It was July 2007 and Potter, a senior executive at giant US healthcare firm Cigna, was visiting relatives in the poverty-ridden mountain districts of northeast Tennessee. He saw an advert in a local paper for a touring free medical clinic at a fairground just across the state border in Wise County, Virginia.

Potter, who had worked at Cigna for 15 years, decided to check it out. What he saw appalled him. Hundreds of desperate people, most without any medical insurance, descended on the clinic from out of the hills. People queued in long lines to have the most basic medical procedures carried out free of charge. Some had driven more than 200 miles from Georgia. Many were treated in the open air. Potter took pictures of patients lying on trolleys on rain-soaked pavements.

Potter resigned shortly afterwards. Last month he testified in Congress, becoming one of the few industry executives to admit that what its critics say is true: healthcare insurance firms push up costs, buy politicians and refuse to pay out when many patients actually get sick. In chilling words he told a Senate committee: "I worked as a senior executive at health insurance companies and I saw how they confuse their customers and dump the sick: all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors."

Obama's plans are now mired and the opponents of reform are winning. The Republican attack machine has cranked into gear, labelling reform as "socialist" and warning ordinary Americans that government bureaucrats, not doctors, will choose their medicines. The bill's opponents say the huge cost can only be paid by massive tax increases on ordinary Americans and that others will have their current healthcare plans taken away. Many centrist Democratic congressmen, wary of their conservative voters, are wavering. The legislation has failed to meet Obama's August deadline and is now delayed until after the summer recess. Many fear that this loss of momentum could kill it altogether.

To Potter that is no surprise. He has seen all this before. In his long years with Cigna he rose to be the company's top PR executive. He had an eagle-eye view of the industry's tactics of scuppering political efforts to get it to reform. "This is a very wealthy industry and they use PR very effectively. They manipulate public opinion and the news media and they have built up these relationships with all these politicians through campaign contributions," Potter said.

Potter was witness to the campaign against Michael Moore's healthcare documentary Sicko. The industry slammed the film as one-sided and politically motivated. Secret documents leaked from the American Health Insurance Plans, the industry's lobby group, detailed the plan to paint Moore as a fringe radical. Potter now says the film "hit the nail on the head". "The Michael Moore movie that I saw was full of truth," he admits.

Potter was also working for Cigna when it became embroiled in the case of Nataline Sarkisyan, whose family went public after Cigna refused to pay for a liver transplant that it considered "experimental" and therefore not covered by their policy. Cigna reversed this decision only hours before the Californian teenager died. "I wish I could have done more in that case," Potter said.

Such sentiments are rare in an industry that has given America a healthcare system that can be cripplingly expensive for patients, but that does not produce a healthier population. The industry is often accused of wriggling out of claims. Firms comb medical records for any technicality that will allow them to refuse to pay. In one recently publicised example, a retired nurse from Texas discovered she had breast cancer. Yet her policy was cancelled because her insurers found she had previously had treatment for acne, which the dermatologist had mistakenly noted as pre-cancerous. They decreed she had misinformed them about her medical history and her double mastectomy was cancelled just three days before the operation.

A lot of that money also goes into contributions to politicians of both parties - $372m in the past nine years - and in lobbying groups to run TV ads slamming Obama's plans. Many of these ads deploy naked scare tactics. One report said that the industry was spending $1.4m a day on its campaign. In the face of that, it is perhaps no wonder that the Senate has delayed its vote, dealing a massive blow to Obama. "I have seen how the opponents of healthcare reform go to work... they are trying to delay action. They know that if they keep the process going for months, and turn it into a big mess, then the political impetus behind it will lessen," Potter said.

 

[maxiep]

Wow, The Guardian takes a non-capitalist position? Shocking!

 

[Chutney]

It's not even an opinion piece.

 

[maxiep]

It's not even an opinion piece.

Everything in The Guardian is an opinion piece.

 

[deception]

Wow, The Guardian takes a non-capitalist position? Shocking!

dude, did u read the piece? it documents a former cigna executive who became a whistleblower and even testified before congress.

 

[maxiep]

dude, did u read the piece? it documents a former cigna executive who became a whistleblower and even testified before congress.

Yep. Unlike you, I do bother to inform myself before arriving at an opinion.

 

[deception]

Yep. Unlike you, I do bother to inform myself before arriving at an opinion.

dude, shouldnt u be attending a birther convention or something?

 

[Shapecity]

No matter what side you're on the system is broke. Everyone scams the system, from patient, to doctors, to the insurance companies. I think the best approach is trying out various proposals at state levels or even at various facilities and figure out which ones work best and expand from there.

 

[maxiep]

dude, shouldnt u be attending a birther convention or something?

Dude, shouldn't you still be counting votes in Florida, trying to find a way that Gore actually won?

 

[deception]

Dude, shouldn't you still be counting votes in Florida, trying to find a way that Gore actually won?

maybe if gore won- u guys wouldnt be embroiled in two wars and an economic crisis mirroring the great depression.

 

[maxiep]

maybe if gore won- u guys wouldnt be embroiled in two wars and an economic crisis mirroring the great depression.

Yep, I'm sure the terrorists would have loved us. As for your economic analysis, the economy chugged along just fine while President Bush was in office

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/Economics/GDP-Growth.aspx?Symbol=USD