Wendell Potter: A Helping Hand for Rep. Marsha Blackburn

[antigop]

http://wendellpotter.com/2013/03/a-helping-hand-for-rep-marsha-blackburn/

Rather than asking me to share my knowledge of industry practices that have led to steep year-after-year premium increases for thousands of employers, Rep. Blackburn instead used most of her time to read a list of business owners in her district she said had written to her complaining of recent rate increases she maintained were caused by Obamacare.

“What do you have to say to those businesses?” she asked me. When I began to respond, she cut me off mid-sentence. Apparently, she was not happy I began to describe the tragic situation of Leslie Elder. After she was diagnosed with breast cancer, her husband, a small business owner, had to drop coverage for all of his employees and dependents because his insurance carrier raised his premium so high.

As Rep. Blackburn was reading the list, I couldn’t help but think that some, if not most, of the people who had written her had deliberately – and erroneously – been led to believe that their premiums increased this year solely because of Obamacare. After all, it is in the best interests of the insurance industry for people to believe that. You see, they recently launched a huge effort to get lawmakers and regulators to gut some of the most important consumer protections in Obamacare. These businesses believing Obamacare is the cause of their premium increases is an indication of the industry’s power to manipulate public opinion..

In fact, one of the real objectives of the “Time for Affordability” PR and advertising campaign the insurance industry is waging is to obscure a reality they want us and our lawmakers to ignore or forget. Insurance premiums have become unaffordable not because of health care reform but because insurers have been able to get away with raising rates as high as necessary to meet profits expected by board members, shareholders and Wall Street financial analysts.

As I told the subcommittee members in my opening remarks, the average family premium increased 131 percent between 1999 and 2009, far faster than both wages and inflation.

Video posted here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017109340

[russspeakeasy]

1. Thanks for posting this.

[antigop]

2. You are welcome. I always read what Wendell has to say. nt

[Dragonfli]

3. Health insurance providers are best described as health "protection rackets"

They are not service providers, they sell no actual product, their only function appears to be to take our money, decide if they will allow us to see the actual service providers such as Nurses Doctors and other highly trained professionals that do provide actual services and products such as medicines and or hands on care.

They keep our money if they do nothing, and wet their beaks with a guaranteed skim off the top (profit) when we do manage to convince the racket boss to give us permission to walk through the door to the Drs. office.

Even then, the gorilla at the door will shake us down further and take what is in our pockets to discourage us further from entering the office to get the health care we need, if we don't have enough green, he roughs us up a little and sends us packin' because even permission from the mob boss will not get us passed this goon without greasing the wheels some more, he works for the racketeer and his job is to provide another layer to help them provide nothing if possible for the protection money we pay (a clever shake down called "deductibles" and "copays" in the mob vernacular of these protection goons.)

Without paying the protection racketeers we are denied health, a seemingly passive but often deadly form of "roughing up" the shop owner or individual for not paying the protection money- resulting in everything from unset broken bones, to death, just like the most fictional black and white mobsters and hooligans threaten and are filmed doing to the hapless mark in any b mob villain movie.

It gets worse in this movie, see the boss has paid off the mayor and chief of police to not only allow them to conduct these harmful and unnecessary non-service protection rackets, but require us by law to pay the protection money, or they will send their own goon to collect the vig, (fee for not paying promptly a racketeer from one of the mob families) a vig we will continue paying for not having this "protection", that is really as we all know just protection from the racketeers goons that are allowed to block doors with brass knuckles in hand to prevent us affordable access to the care behind the door.

The deal with the mayor is pretty sweet for these Capones of entrepreneurial "non service" providers growing rich off this racket, because the mayor lets them decide the cost of the "protection" and let them raise the rates as high as necessary, in other words:

Protection premiums have become unaffordable not because of the mayors protection racket reform but because the mob bosses have been able to get away with raising rates as high as necessary to meet profits expected by the consiglieres, the Dons and the old men that get their cash envelopes out of "respect" and occasional investment.


Or in the words of an ex Don of the family,
"Insurance premiums have become unaffordable not because of health care reform but because insurers have been able to get away with raising rates as high as necessary to meet profits expected by board members, shareholders and Wall Street financial analysts."

I was hoping this movie would have a hero, an "untouchable" copper that would stop the protection rackets and save the shop keeps and individual marks from being roughed up by criminals that get paid to provide nothing but protection from, well, them and nothing else.


The storyline disappoints because the mayor and chief of police in this movie are corrupt co-conspirators, and Eliot Ness was never even written into the script.

I give this movie two thumbs down and would like the ticket price refunded so I can try to pay for the shakedown.

[BillyRibs]

4. Well Rep. Blackburn,

Since you Have all the answers why am I here today? They all use the Bill O' tactic to avoid the hard answers to their stupid questions.

[tartan2]

5. The first time I saw Wendell Potter

was when Bill Moyers interviewed him on his show and I have been following Wendell ever since. It's unfortunate that Marsha Blackburn was so disrespectful to him.