Go Watch It: Bill Moyers Interviews CIGNA PR Exec on Resistance to Health Care Reform

Take 30 minutes of your day to watch Bill Moyers and understand who doesn't want you to have a public option in choosing your health insurance--a public option that has overhead, like Medicare, of about 3%, as compared to the health insurance industry's 20% for overhead and profit. Says Bill Moyers' guest, Wendell Potter, "...the industry doesn't want to compete against a more efficient competitor."

Bill Moyers (about 21.20 in to the video): You told Congress that the [health care] industry has hijacked health care and turned it into a giant ATM for Wall Street. You said, "I saw how they confused their customers and dumped the sick. Also, they can satisfy their Wall Street investors." How do they satisfy their investors on Wall Street?

Find out the answer from the former CIGNA exec, who explains how the "medical loss ratio," or the chunk of every dollar spent to pay medical claims, has been shrinking. If you got sick and needed health insurance bills paid in the 1990s, about $.95 of every dollar went to cure you. Now, only about $.80 of every dollar you pay goes to your care. Wall Street punishes health insurance companies that have a too-high medical loss ratio. That means companies that flourish are ones who figure out how to deny you care, drop you, or give you less expensive care. Your health could literally be standing in the way of their bottom line.

Overhead of 3% via a public option, versus gold-plated tableware for health insurance industry executives who fly first class on the $.20 of every dollar of mine--and yours--that goes to their "overhead"?

Get some facts from someone whose highly-compensated job it was to sell you made-up fear about something that could instead benefit YOU and not them. Your health isn't someone else's bottom line.

Cynematic blogs at P i l l o w b o o k.

Comments

[Kellie]

This is your healthcare debate? You are working the angle of a health insurance executive not wanting to compete? Wow. I came to this site because I have several democrat friends who recommended it as a place I could find the 'other side' of the story that has truth to it rather than the usual (both sides do this) scare tactics. I had hoped to read through anything that defends, supports, explains the many ISSUES with the healthcare policy being discussed in Congress right now. I don't think this is the correct site as none of your entires tagged with 'healthcare' provide much in the way of explanation. Perhaps some of your other topics are better researched. I'll give it another shot.

[cynematic]

Kellie,
This isn't the entirety of the health care debate, just a portion that describes WHY a public option is necessary. And where resistance to it comes from.

I'm not "working any angle" (your words), I simply find it compelling to have a marketing executive for a giant insurance company tell everyone what his job really was: to maximize company profits even if it meant lying to the public about health care reform.