http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/opinion/27kristof.html?_r=2&ref=opinion
Kristof writes about Wendell Potter, former communications director for Humana and then for Cigna, who last year made a principled decision to get out of the lucrative business because he no longer could do what his job required: promote the insurance policies that had shifted from "spreading the risk to dumping the risky."
In 2007 he had attended the premier of Michael Moore's film "Sicko," which exposed our sick health care industry, in order to write a propaganda counterblast. Instead, he found himself agreeing with much of what he saw in the film.
He says that the corporate executives he worked with are not bad people; it's just that:
"they are removed from the consequences of their decisions, as he was, and are obsessed with sustaining the company’s stock price — which means paying fewer medical bills.One way to do that is to deny requests for expensive procedures. A second is “rescission” — seizing upon a technicality to cancel the policy of someone who has been paying premiums and finally gets cancer or some other expensive disease."
Kristof continues:
"The insurers are open to one kind of reform — universal coverage through mandates and subsidies, so as to give them more customers and more profits. But they don’t want the reforms that will most help patients, such as a public insurance option, enforced competition and tighter regulation.Mr. Potter argues that much tougher regulation is essential. He also believes that a robust public option is an essential part of any health reform, to compete with for-profit insurers and keep them honest."Where is the voice in the Senate to replace Ted Kennedy's booming and sometimes bombastic rhetoric that denounces such? It's not Max Baucus or Harry Reid or Chris Dodd. If he had not been sidelined by illness during the last year, we would have a better health care bill with better chances for passing.
Let's hope his death can inspire good legislation, as Jack's assassination helped inspire the passage of civil rights legislation in 1964.
Ralph
I doubt anything will dissuade the Republican junta. Without their oppositionalism, they're nothing, and they have to deal with the last eight years. I expect they'll present a united front for the forseeable future. Either it will work [like with Carter] or it won't [like with Clinton]. But I like the hopefulness of your thought. Maybe I can think it if tomorrow is a sunny day...
ReplyDelete