Tuesday, July 21, 2009

An Insider's case for Health Care Reform

Very convincing arguments for Health Care Reform and why unchecked profit making incentives in the Health Insurance industry creates evil (from a Society's perspective) were made by the Insurance Insider Wendell Potter.

Wendell Potter formerly worked at CIGNA leading up their PR web of deceit and was instrumental in defeating the Clinton Health Care Reform of the 90s.

Some key points he had:

Wall Street Investors punish Insurers based on their measure of Medical Loss Ratio - essentially a measure of how many cents to the dollar$ of your premiums go towards paying claims. The lower the value the more profitable the company. In the early 90s it was about 95 cents to the dollar but now it has reached approx 80 cents to the dollar. CEO / Executive pay is directly based on this measure.

They like to scare the public against Govt. based plans saying: You will have a Govt. bureaucrat standing between you and your doctor! - well having Wall-Street and Corporate bureaucrats stand in your way purely for profit with an incentive to kill your claim (not to mention you) is gotta be much worse don't you think?

Finally, Govt run Medicare has higher satifaction ratings than private plans and operate with a 3% administrative overhead while private Insurance plans have a 20% overhead mostly going towards excessive executive salaries, claim denial processes and negative PR strategies - so essentially 20% of your premiums go towards screwing you!

Watch the Bill Moyers Interview..(where i got my info)
Another interview:

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