Whistle-blower: Health care industry engaging in PR tactics

[groundloop]

Source: CNN

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Wendell Potter knows a little something about the health care industry's practices and is not afraid of to speak out as the health care reform debate heats up around the country.

The former vice president of corporate communications at insurance giant Cigna, who left his post, says the industry is playing "dirty tricks" in an effort to manipulate public opinion......

Potter described how underwriters at his former company would drive small businesses with expensive insurance claims to dump their Cigna policies. Industry executives refer to the practice as "purging," Potter said.

"When that business comes up for renewal, the underwriters jack the rates up so much, the employer has no choice but to drop insurance," Potter had said

Potter also has said he decided to resign in 2007 after Cigna's controversial handling of an insurance claim made by the family of a California teenager, Nataline Sarkysian.

The Sarkysian family made repeated appeals at news conferences for Cigna to approve a liver transplant for the 17-year-old, who had leukemia. Cigna initially declined to cover the operation, then reversed its decision.

Sarkysian died hours after the company's reversal.


Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/08/12/health.industry.whistleblower/index.html

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Let the damned health insurance companies go out of business if they can't compete against a public option/single payer. I'm fighting United Healthcare right now for my wife, they've managed to drag things out for over 6 months so far, gotta protect their record profits.

[Soylent Brice]

1. K&R

[Jennicut]

2. If they cannot compete or refuse to compete, they should be driven out of business

How do they sleep at night, greedy bastards?

[ArcticFox]

3. Corporations don't sleep

or die, or care

[L. Coyote]

4. Hundreds of workers denying claims so CEO can earn millions is NOT intelligent

and all those people could be productive members of society instead, contributing to the economy by growing potatoes, or anything useful instead.

[primavera]

5. And don't forget the shareholders

Obscene CEO salaries are a big part of the problem, but the expectations of shareholders that companies will produce massive dividends should not be overlooked either. In Europe, most businesses take out loans from the national banks in order to fund their enterprises. As a result, they have no fiduciary duty to pay anyone any dividends, so they are free to focus more on the long-term stability of the company, channeling profits into R&D, infrastructural improvements, employee training and satisfaction, etc.. In contrast, most US companies are financed by selling shares to stockholders, whose expectations must be satisfied or the stockholders will dump the stock and buy the stock of some other company that is providing greater returns on their investments. Our system thus strongly favors short term yields, as the stockholder is free at any time to milk a stock for all its worth, then dump it in favor of another as soon as it fails to produce sky-high, short-term yields. This is yet another way in which our "ownership" society promotes economic slash and burn rather than long-term stability.

[TheMadMonk]

7. Not just dividends, but ever increasing dividends.

The way corporate law is written in the USA pretty much guarantees the boom bust cycle. And until that gets changed the problem will only continue to get worse.

Just wait for the next Wall St disaster.

[primavera]

9. I hear you

Makes you wonder how many times we'll have to go through this before we finally begin to learn from our mistakes. While over in Europe this summer, I saw a whole slew of books in bookstores which addressed the question of the free market as a failed paradigm. Maybe I've missed them, but I haven't seen any such calls for far-reaching, systemic reevaluation of our core economic principles here in this country.

[fascisthunter]

10. thank you for exposing their pink under-bellies

[oldironside]

6. I wish you and your wife...

... all the best, whilst at the same time being thankful that my loved ones are covered either by the NHS or the German system.

Good luck and I hope you take the bastards to the cleaners.

[rocktivity]

8. Candidate for this year's "You Call This NEWS?" award

CNN has just picked up on Potter? He testified before Congress in in late June!

:eyes:
rocktivity

[groundloop]

11. At least this side of the story is beginning to be covered by MSM

It can't hurt that CNN and other MSM are beginning to expose this crap while the healthcare / health insurance debate is raging.