Wendell Potter's Blog, page 21

Missouri Lawmakers Renew Cynical Efforts to Derail Obamacare Navigators

Stymied by a federal court, legislators are doing insurance agents’ bidding again. To discourage folks from signing up for coverage on the Obamacare exchanges, Republican lawmakers in several states have pushed through bills making it difficult for people to get free help from specially trained “navigators” authorized by the Affordable Care Act. At the top [...]

Congress Twists the Relevant Facts on Purpose

Lawwmakers deliberately distorted a recent Congressional Budget Office report. If you’re curious about what I used to do as a PR guy for the health insurance industry, how I often took facts and figures and twisted them to advance a specific political or financial agenda, take a look at the behavior of some members of [...]

Massachusetts Tackles Next Phase of Health Care Reform: Controlling Costs

State where sweeping changes began hopes new commission can squeeze wasteful spending. While lawmakers in Washington and state capitals continue to obsess about Obamacare — either how to make sure it is being implemented as Congress intended, or how to make sure it isn’t — Massachusetts legislators have focused their attention on the next phase [...]

‘Bailout?’ ‘Unprecedented?’ Honestly?

ACA provisions assailed by critics ensure market stability; $25 billion? Pocket change compared to billions poured into Medicare Advantage.  In the past, whenever anyone talked about the “three Rs,” they most likely were referring to things we were supposed to be learning in school: “readin’, ritin’, and ‘rithmatic.” But in Washington and health insurance circles [...]

Pay No Attention to Those Insurance Lobbyists Behind the Medicare Curtain!

‘Grass roots’ group says it represents seniors but is really run by health insurers. If you go to 601 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Suite 500, in Washington, D.C. in search of what you’ve been told is the address of a grass roots organization concerned about “cuts” to Medicare, you will likely be surprised what you find [...]

Resolving to Take Better Care of Our Teeth Could Save Our Lives–And Billions of Dollars

Author’s Note: This is the third in a series of articles examining America’s oral health care crisis. Be sure to read part two, “What Really Scares Middle-Income Americans Away From the Dentist.” As we inch closer to February, fewer and fewer of us are keeping those New Year’s resolutions we made. According to researchers at [...]

Selective Outrage Over Federal Health Care Costs

Republicans feign outrage over Obamacare’s risk fund for insurers, but have nothing to say about waste in Medicare Advantage. Knowing I’ve been both a critic of insurance company practices and a supporter of efforts to reform the industry, a FOX news producer reached out last week to get my take on accusations by conservatives that [...]

Looking For The Down Side?

WSJ survey analysis concludes ‘little progress on uninsured,’ while burying real news: ACA is ‘chipping away’ at number of uninsured. The Wall Street Journal on Saturday took a decidedly “glass is half full” approach to reporting some survey data of new health insurance marketplace enrollees. Under the headline, “Exchanges See Little Progress on Uninsured,” the [...]

Wendell Potter on ‘Obamacare: What’s in It for Me?’

From: MichaelMoore.com By Jon Schwarz, Get Wendell Potter’s new ebook ‘Obamacare: What’s in It for Me?’ Michael Moore has called Wendell Potter “the Daniel Ellsberg of corporate America.” In 2008 Potter walked away from a lucrative 20-year career at the top of public relations for CIGNA and other insurance companies to pull back the curtain [...]

A Challenging Two-Step: Cutting Costs and Covering the Uninsured

Massachusetts demonstrates both the perils and promise of health care reform. A valid criticism of the Affordable Care Act is that it doesn’t do enough to control health care costs. While there are a number of the law’s provisions that should help — such as the requirement that Medicare reduce payments to hospitals that have [...]