Wendell Potter's Blog, page 14

Energy Firms, Health Insurers Deftly Use Others to Spread Propaganda

The disinformation dance. I usually don’t pay a lot of attention to the songs on a restaurant’s playlist, but when “The Old Rugged Cross” came on at the Manassas, Virginia, Cracker Barrel as I was traveling to Tennessee recently, I put my fork down and listened. Hearing the hymn took me back nearly half a […]

Alabama OB-GYN Whose Patient Died, Pushed For ‘Drive-Through Deliveries’

Sen. Larry Stutts fought law enacted to require longer hospital stays. During his campaign for the Alabama Legislature last year, now-state Sen. Larry Stutts, a Sheffield Republican and OB-GYN, vowed to get the government out of the middle of the patient-physician relationship. He made no mention of the fact that what he really had in […]

Why Growing Numbers of Americans Are Embarrassed to Smile

Fifteen years ago this spring, Surgeon General David Satcher issued a call to action to address what he called America’s “silent epidemic”–the growing incidence of dental disease in this country. Unfortunately, we as a nation have not made much progress over the last decade and a half. Just last weekend, thousands of people lined up […]

The Enduring Myth of Cost Shifting

Don’t believe insurers’ line that federal cuts are boosting our costs. Health insurance executives and lobbyists have for years told us that one of the main reasons they charge us so much for coverage is the cost shifting that results from Uncle Sam’s stinginess. The story goes like this: hospitals are paid so inadequately by […]

Fed War on Health Care Spending Abuse Needs to Include Medicare Advantage

Obama administration bragging about anti-fraud efforts, but Center report showed bigger dollars are being lost elsewhere. The Obama administration went to great lengths last week to inform us that it recovered $3.3 billion in fraudulent payments to Medicare health care providers in fiscal year 2014. Officials even went so far as to give an advance […]

Consumers Getting ‘Skinned’ by Health Insurers

Bigger premiums, more cost sharing equate to big profits. The reason health care costs are so high is because Americans don’t have nearly enough “skin in the game.” That was the phrase that many of my former colleagues in the insurance industry and I began using in the early 2000s as a way to deflect […]

If Obamacare Critics Win high court case, Effects Will Be Wildly Disparate

Kentucky residents would be unaffected, Tennesseans devastated. If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the plaintiffs in King v. Burwell, nowhere will the effect be more  stark than along the 400-mile border between two states my family has called home, Tennessee and Kentucky. In the state where I grew up, Tennessee, thousands of people […]

Anatomy of a True Health Insurance Death Spiral

States deprived of subsidies by SCOTUS could face market collapse felt by guaranteed-issue states that lacked an individual mandate. I mentioned in my last post that a Supreme Court decision in favor of the plaintiffs in King v. Burwell would likely lead to a collapse of the health insurance market in more than two-thirds of […]

Succeed or Fail, Challenge May Push Rates Higher

The specter alone of a SCOTUS ruling for plaintiffs will likely force industry actuaries to spike premiums based on a worst-case scenario. You may have heard that the Supreme Court will be hearing arguments on Wednesday in yet another case challenging the Affordable Care Act. What you probably have not heard is that regardless of […]

Obamacare Opponents Should be Careful What They Wish For

Supreme court decision nullifying subsidies would result in chaos. “Obamacare is a train wreck, and that’s actually not fair to train wrecks.” So said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) at last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland. It was a line that drew both applause and laughs, as you would expect from a gathering of […]