"What Country Is This?" - Potter on Bill Moyers | Health Care

"What Country Is This?" - Potter on Bill Moyers

categories: For Profit Insurance, The Uninsured and Underinsured

Published July 12, 2009 @ 12:07PM PT

I’ve written about Wendell Potter, the former executive at Cigna and Humana whose Congressional testimony helped pull away the curtain on how private, for-profit insurance companies look at themselves – as entities more beholden to shareholders than their customers. On Friday night, he was the guest on Bill Moyers Journal. PBS.org has the whole program online, but they’ve also released clips like the one below on YouTube. If you don’t have time to watch the whole thing – which I highly recommend – these bite-size chunks are must-see.

You often hear people who know very little on the topic proclaim that people come from across the world to receive health care in the United States. That may be – but it’s just as typical these days for Americans to become “medical tourists” to other countries because of cost. Far more typical, and sometimes far more shocking, are free clinics for those who are uninsured and have nowhere else to go. They tend to be in rural areas and are typified by the “health care expedition” or makeshift clinic near where Potter grew up. The experience of seeing the clinic first hand (and taking pictures) helped change his mind on how beneficent the industry he worked for truly was. It’s hard to fly in corporate jets and eat lunch with gold-plated silverware when you’ve seen how your company’s obsession with lowering their “medical losses” – the term used by the industry when they have to actually pay for care – is affecting real people.

Watch the first of these clips below:

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Comments (5)

Thank you Tim. This interview was amazing! THIS is why we don't have health care that covers every one. No other reason.

Posted by Christina Campbell on 07/12/2009 @ 12:42PM PT
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This is the most convincing piece I've seen in support of a public option in Health Care Reform. Thanks for putting this on change.org. It needs to be spread all over the web and seen by everyone.

Posted by Thomas Grant on 07/12/2009 @ 12:52PM PT
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I agree that every American should see this important interview. However, I think Wendell Potter actually supports Single-Payer National Health Insurance.

It is unfortunate that people often use the terms "public option" and "Medicare for all" interchangeably. This confusion was intended by Democrats who are afraid to go all the way and commit themselves to the plan Americans really need.

The public option is very much a compromise. It might expand coverage somewhat, but it would not achieve universal coverage, it would not permit global budgeting, and it would not save any significant amount of money, whereas single-payer will meet all of these essential objectives.

We should be united in fighting for the gold standard, and not falling for a compromise position right off the bat.

Posted by Carla Rautenberg on 07/13/2009 @ 05:33AM PT
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Go to PBS.org to watch the whole interview.

Posted by Thomas Grant on 07/12/2009 @ 12:54PM PT
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This guy is a shill. Plain and simple. I support HR 676 and Rep. John Conyers D-MI. Single Payer. Health care is a right not something profits by bankrupting the poorest people in society. This guy is still friends with them. He supports the new plan oh lets see why because it IS corporate welfare. Of course Wendell loves the new plan in which insurance lobbyists have written so complicated that even the most experienced congressmen have shunned its length and ambiguity. this bill is a big problem. Do not let them sucker you into believing this is the right direction. Even many progressive people have been fooled by this bill. Read what John Conyers and Dennis Kucinich have to say. These are not conservatives against the obama bill but the most liberal democrats. Worried Yet?

Posted by Dan Spencer on 08/11/2009 @ 03:41AM PT
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Tim has been an online organizer and blogger on health care policy for the Obama for America campaign (during the primaries) and currently for the Committee of Interns and Residents/SEIU Healthcare, a labor union for intern and resident doctors. Views expressed here are Tim's, and don't represent the positions of CIR or SEIU.