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Warning: Co-op Kool Aid Is Bad for Your Health
I’m beginning to think that the Kool-Aid being served at meetings of the Senate Finance Committee’s soon-to-be infamous Gang of Six is coming from either fantasy land or the health insurance industry.
For those of you who might not be following the sorry machinations of health care reform in the Senate Finance Committee, the Gang of Six is a group of three Democrats and three Republicans hand-picked by Committee Chair Max Baucus, who is one of the three Democrats. The gang meets often, supposedly drafting a bipartisan bill. In reality, if such a bill emerges, it will be a gift to the insurance industry because the gang includes some of the industry’s best friends on Capitol Hill.
Thanks to gang member Kent Conrad, a Democrat from North Dakota, the gang reportedly is giving serious consideration to replacing the good idea of a public insurance option with an idea that is sheer fantasy: a few nonprofit co-operatives that would be expected to compete with the cartel of giant for-profit insurance companies and “win in the marketplace,” to use a favorite term of my former CEO and cartel heavyweight, H. Edward Hanway.
If you don’t believe anything else I have said or written, please believe this: nonprofit co-operatives don’t stand a snowball’s chance of competing with those big companies and making a whit of a difference in the lives of the 75 million Americans who either have no insurance or have such marginal insurance they might as well have no insurance.
Kool-Aid came to mind as I was reading a story in the Wall Street Journal this week about Conrad’s continuing and naive insistence that co-ops could work. I remembered sitting in a meeting of other insurance company executives a few years ago. A leading advocate of the high-deductible plans the industry is trying to force us all into these days (and out of the plans insurance industry pollsters and politicians say we are all happy with and can stay in--if we wish upon a star), grew so exasperated after failing to convince us that these plans would be good for most Americans, he finally said, “Look, you’re just going to have to drink the Kool-Aid.”
It looks as if the Gang of Six is about to offer its co-op Kool-Aid to the other members of the Senate Finance and to tell them to drink up.
The reality is there has been a tremendous consolidation in the health insurance industry over the past 15 years. A cartel of very large for-profit insurance companies now dominates the industry. One out of every three Americans is enrolled in some kind of plan offered by just seven of those large companies. Almost all metropolitan areas in the country—and states that are more rural than urban— are now dominated by just two or three insurers. It is impossible for even one of the other large insurers to break into a market dominated by its competitors.
Take Philadelphia, where I live and where CIGNA, my former employer is based, as an example. The lion’s share of the insurance market in Philly is controlled by Independence Blue Cross and Aetna. CIGNA would love to be a big player in its own hometown but has never been able to scale up to be a serious competitor. It has some business there but not much compared to Independence and Aetna. If CIGNA can’t overcome the huge barriers to entering that market, a nonprofit co-op wouldn’t have a chance.
Advocates of co-ops point out that they work in a few other segments of the economy, and primarily in a few rural parts of the country, such as in the cranberry and raisin businesses.
Growing cranberries and raisins is a heck of a lot different from providing health care coverage to 50 million Americans who don’t have it because they can’t afford the overpriced policies from Big Insurance—or because they can’t buy coverage at any price because of a “pre-existing condition.”
To be sure, health insurers take every opportunity to badmouth co-ops, saying they are a backdoor to socialized medicine. Their criticism is disingenuous. Secretly, they would love to have a bill that creates co-ops that won’t work instead of a single-payer or public option that has proven successful in other western countries.
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68 Comments so far
Show AllRepublican and other outspoken opponents of medical reform such as the Gang of Six, want to wipe out Medicare, Medicaid and even increase what people pay for limited medical insurance.
They want to destroy any reasonable form of affordable medical insurance and provide even greater long-term profits for insurance companies.
They’re not worried about end-of-life care; they’re worried about profits. And they know that with no real reform, Medicare, Medicaid and low-cost medical insurance will be financially wiped out within the next generation.
how much will national health care cost us????
NOTHING.......ZERO......ZIP
in fact it will save us
RIGHT NOW
OUR GOVERNMENT spends $3300.00 dollars per person per year on health care.........then the rest of us pay thousands more
in ENGLAND where they have national health care....their GOVERNMENT spends $2900.00 per person on healthcare
and THEY have universal coverage
so we ALREADY pay for UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE..... we just are not receiving it.....
why not???
great job djb
If President Obama funnels millions of new customers with taxpayers funding to private insurance companies which he reportedly holds in contempt, the day on which he signs that bill will go down in history as another day of infamy.
He has to know if he's does this and tries to call it reform it will be the end of his Presidency. He might think he can sell such shit as shinola but if he tries he'll be sorry. He's already falling in the polls because he's being seen as a weak sister on this issue and the left is starting walk. The Wall st. bail-out and then this is just to much for some of us.
It may be the end of his presidency, but that only means he can start four years earlier on the post-presidential self enrichment. Writing books, speaking tours... He'll be set for life, and will be able to provide the best health care insurance for him and his family. And isn't that what America all about now a days. Take care of yourself and screw everybody else.
It could be the end of a lot of things. The game plan of pulling people of good intentions from the right and left into centrist compromises, and trusting blue dogs, democratic vote whores, and Clinton Admin retreads to help produce change isn't working. The left is fed up. The shrill know-nothing ultra right is unrelenting and now smells blood. Say goodbye to the democratic majority, meaningfull health care reform, and, most of all, any chance of mitigating climate change.
It has come to this: A government of the few, by the few, and for the few. The rest is all just talk and more talk.
I understand what the "Kool Aid" references are about, but I think it is not accurate. In the Jonestown horror of compliant foolishness, the people who ingested the Kool Aid all died.
In Washington and Wall Street, what these arrogant addicts are ingesting is killing the rest of us.
What is happening is more accurately an intoxicating form of cannibalism. The more consumed, the more desired, with less and less tolerance of restaint.
The so-called democrats who still want to believe in this administration are merely participants in the slaughter and consumption.
I think drinking the "Kool Aid" generally refers to the fact that Kool Aid was sometimes the medium by which LSD was ingested (in LSD's heyday). It is often used to describe one who has lost the ability to distinguish reality from fantasy. It's not about dying.
IF what you are saying is true, then the use of the term is even LESS appropriate than the reference to the "Reverend" Jim Jones having his followers commit suicide by drinking toxic Kool Aid. Especially when I know from experience that LSD (which does not require Kool Aid) makes you see things in a way you never could before - it is about OPENING you eyes and mind - unlike the brainwashing referred to in this article.
Urban dictionary does a pretty good job explaining it at this link.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=drink+the+kool-aid
It does reference the Jim Jones cult episode.
“Don’t drink the Kool-Aid.” Has come to mean, "Don’t trust any group you find to be a little on the kooky side." or "Whatever they tell you, don't believe it too strongly".
While drink the Kool Aid means
To completely buy into an idea or system, whether good or bad.
Going along with what a crowd desires. Often used when a person changes positions on a topic.
I agree, BA. No matter how much slight of hand, the bottom line is that Washington and Wall Street are saying that the profiteering is more important than the lives of citizens and taxpayers. We can't reform insurance because it would hurt profits and stock, so it is better to tell ordinary Americans that they can go without care, be bankrupted or be oppressed by the amount of their labor going to these profiteers. To your point, it is murder, not suicide. They are not the ones who suffer and die.
Congress and the lobbyists believe the game can and will go on. I don't think they've yet grasped that the peasants are beginning to revolt, both by choice and necessity. People like Conrad can pretend that their stance is merely realistic, but they delude themselves to not notice the harm being done.
Okay Mr. Potter. I want you to seriously consider running for office in 2016. It could be you and Anthony Weiner. Both of you have been tireless is your effort to keep America focused on the real needs for reform. You break down media barriers and campaign relentlessly for those whose voices are left out of the debate. Sounds like a Progressive Ticket I could get behind.
But it has to be you, Mr. Potter. The only other choice right now would be Barney Franks.
And I don't know if I could stand on a street corner holding a sign saying:
"We need Weiner and Franks!"
One Group. One Plan. One Payer.
The American Plan.
Neilz: Having seen Wendell Potter on Bill Moyers Journal, I'd endorse your "ticket" though I'd prefer Potter/Weiner after watching Barney display his public impotence at a "health care forum." If anyone didn't see the Moyers interview, it's worth a look:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07102009/watch2.html
Potter worked for Cigna (not mentioned in his article) and his narrative was a shocking expose on the way that he and other Cigna employees made it their "business" not to approve medical claims as it was defined as their main job to DENY claims. This is exactly where any health care "reform" that leaves insurance companies to guarantee "health care" will crash to earth. When your money and not your health is the "bottom line" for those you decide on the distribution of medical services, you don't have a health care system but a monetary rip-off.
By the way, I'd accept Moyers himself on that 2016 (or how about 2012 for that matter?) ticket. I regard him as the real "Mr. Integrity" of journalism.
Yeah....it was cheap shot. And sometimes, well, you just gotta love Barney.
I've followed Potter on Moyers and through the media. Weiner is a new discovery. He turned the inevitable delay caused by the obstructionists into an opportunity to reinvigorate his call for true reform. Thereby turning the obstructionists into unwitting tools of the reformers they so violently oppose. And giving more opportunity to expose those elements corrupting the democratic process.
Win or lose, I hope we find a place for these two in the national arena.
"Potter worked for Cigna (not mentioned in his article)..."
Um....yes, in fact, it was. read the article again.
cute.
Why is it that out of thousands of people that work for the BIG Health Mafia only this one guy defects? I find it hard to believe that many other Potters aren't just waiting to tell their stories as well. We need these people more then any others because they have great credibility even if they are going to be attacked as disgruntled employees. Enough people fit that category at some time or another to still listen to these people and take them seriously. It's their stories that like Potter's hurts the BIG Health mafia the worst. The weasally pols like Obama and the rest have NO credibility and speak out of both sides of their ass at the same time. We need a POTTER army to lead us into battle.
I think there are a couple of reasons why you don't see more guys like Wendell Porter come out of the insurance companies. One is class. When you are at the upper level of an insurance company you become very insulated from the real world. Your are surrounded by people with lots of money at work all day. Then at the end of the day you retreat to your high end neighborhood, or gated community where again you are surrounded by rich SOBs.
When you have spent as much time as I did in the insurance industry you also find out the the guys at the top have a real contempt for the average person, whether it is a customer or an employee. There is always the caring facade, but when it suits them, you will be fired, laid off, outsourced, dropped, or have your premiums jacked up to the point that you can't pay them. Always done with a soothing voice, and a shallow smile, boarding on a smirk.
The other thing is fear of retribution from the industry. Anytime its possible the company will force you to sign an agreement where you can say nothing bad about the company or you will loose pension, and/or retirement health benefits, or be sued.
So it all comes down to I got mine, I don't want to loose it, so screw you. Porter was unique because he took the time to step out of his class bubble to see what was really going on, then also apparently did not have any termination gag orders that force him to shut up about what he knows.
Potter retired. He used to work for CIGNA. I saw much of his interview on Bill Moyer's Journal. He had an epiphany when he visited his family in TN. He went to a health care "fair" which he presumed would be a bunch of booths with medical supply places, etc. hawking their wares. Turned out it was one of those Third World-type free health clinics attended by thousands of real people getting treated in tents and under canopies and on the ground. A Peter on the road to Damascus moment.
Potter was integrally involved in the health care industry's swift-boating (although that term wasn't yet invented) of the Clinton's health reform. So he knows whereof he speaks. He knows how low and how far the insurance industry will go -- and I think he knows any lie is not too big when it comes to preventing any real change to the system.
Wouldn't it have been better for Obama to really support the public option or, God forbid, a single payer plan, and to have it pass and then lose the next election, even have the Dems lose "control" (I use that word jokingly), then to have this disaster? It's a disaster AND we won't have anything...
Obama is spineless, possibly explaining his need for the belt and suspender analogy.
mxyzptlk, get real. "Pass"? By whom? The Blue Dogs and the Republicans constitute a majority. The corporations won Congress. And Rahm Emanuel did his dirty work well, getting Blue Dogs nominated in primaries over progressives. The party machine buried progressives in the primaries. It was worthy of Republican election theft and might as well have been an execution.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
There will be no public option, no Co-Ops......the votes simply aren't there. These Bozo's have lost it for us with their dishonesty.
Potter is so right on the money! Sadly, the gang of six senators is not listening. And it seems a good portion of the electorate, as well as the President, also swallow the cool-aid. "No one every went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people," H. L. Mencken wrote. Death panels, evils of socialized medicine, Medicare Yes, but does the government really run it? On and on. What causes this malady:
In a nutshell--big money! Read on and weep.
Depend on Obama and the Democrats?
Not a chance. They've fallen off the cliff too many times.
Our politicians preach democracy but practice oligarchy. Twas ever thus.
Mantras for our times:
“There is one party of the rich in America—it has two branches: Dems and Republicans”
or, try, “Wall Street and the Pentagon run the show…”
or, “Money talks and BS walks…”
(“military -industrial complex,” the term that President Eisenhower used to describe who runs our country, now dated and not used anymore)
I would only add to 'what causes this malady':
big money AND THE IGNORANCE THAT THE CORPORATOCRACY INTENTIONALLY AIDS AND ABETS IN THE PUBLIC TO SERVE ITS CANCEROUS GROWTH GOALS.
thank you mr. potter and mr.weiner and the many hardworking people trying to swim against the tide of insanity. may your sanity rub off on more, open minds and hearts and serve as an antidote to all that koolaid-drinking.
Notice that Potter's wisdom isn't widely distributed in the MSM. Few people I talk to have even heard of him or know what to believe about what's going on with health care reform. This article here, for instance, is published by CD. So he's preaching to the choir, no?
NMLib: sometimes the choir is all you have to preach to and it's hard for small minorities to resist the siren call of peer pressures to, for example, get on the bandwagon for health care "reform" plans that are not reforms at all. (Same with immigration "reform," "troop draw-downs," etc.) If we can't keep the choir together by our "preaching," what hope do we have that it will ever grow into the congregation?
Wendell Potter was all over the news. All the major networks covered his story on the six o'clock news. Then he was scheduled for Meet the Press and all the other political talk shows on Saturday and Sunday. It's been a major story. Gibbs was asked about it at the last presser. There's even talk that if there is to be a mandatory insurance it will have to be accompanied by regulating the amount of profit insurance companies can make...(hallucinations, your mileage may vary).
The goal for the Senate Finance Committee is to figure how we can get Universal Medicare for We-The-People. If they won't or can't then we must replace the Senators of the Senate Finance Committee.
We already have a co-op. A national co-op: The government. There is no reason it wouldn't be the most efficient means for us to share funds and services. Single-payer health system, please.
I don't feel particularly empowered in the government co-op. I think the govt has been wildly hijacked by large corps and bottom feeders.
I can't disagree that it feels an awful lot like we're peasants living under the rule of detached and ruthless merchant-princes, but I still believe our best hope is turning our government back to the tasks it was built to handle.
And we already have the largest, most efficient pool: the pool that includes everyone.
Think about how insurance companies pool people to pool risk. They need to do that to have profits over their costs, and theoretically, the bureaucratic costs are lowered, too. But the cost of care, the medical cost should be the same no matter what size pool the patient is in. Insurance pools are the tail wagging the dog.
Co-ops are voluntary; taxes aren't.
how much will national health care cost us????
NOTHING.......ZERO......ZIP
in fact it will save us
RIGHT NOW
OUR GOVERNMENT spends $3300.00 dollars per person per year on health care.........then the rest of us pay thousands more
in ENGLAND where they have national health care....their GOVERNMENT spends $2900.00 per person on healthcare
and THEY have universal coverage
so we ALREADY pay for UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE..... we just are not receiving it.....
why not???
Because there are a few people who wouldn't be able to continue putting obscene amounts of our money in their pockets if we were receiving it. That is the reason. That is the only reason. Government currently exists primarily to protect and increase the wealth of the very wealthy. Or, at the very least, to not get in the way of the very wealthy increasing their capacity to exploit people and resources.
We must all remember that the business of the United STates is business and above all profits for the stockholders and CEOs. A universal health care plan would interfere with their profits and perhaps put them out of business unless they can come up with some other scam on the people.
We already have the best Senate that money can buy, so what is the problem?
One often overlooked reason is that, political infants that they are, USans put far too much uncritical stock in the notion of moral hazard. They imagine that if people were entitled to health care, they'd mob their doctors demanding, say, unnecessary colonoscopies. Absurd, of course: here in Canada, the provincial health systems spend a bucket of money every year urging people with colorectal symptoms to see their doctors, and still many don't.
USans also worry that if people are covered, they won't take good care of themselves. This, too, is rubbish: people who have access to decent primary care take BETTER care of themselves.
And finally, USans worry that people won't have an incentive to work two or three jobs for crappy wages if they don't have to pay outrageous insurance premiums on top of the taxes they already pay to subsidise 50% of the health care non-system. This could well be true. Or they might choose to continue working two or three jobs so they can buy more stuff.
Excellent points. The reason those arguments you skillfully refuted were advanced in the first place was corporate PR.
Thanks. It's good to know that someone, somewhere in USanLand hears my howl - and yours.
Our medical "system" has a failed state aura about it. Looking for the best health care plan in America is like looking for the world's fastest Chihuahua.
The basic idea of a co-operative isn't too bad. Co-ops are some of the largest companies in Europe now. Some of Europe's most unemployed towns and districts have lately hit 2% unemployment or less, pretty much entirely because people formed co-ops.
There are quite a few reasons why the United States essentially has a failed medical system, not in the least comparable to the civilized world.
The civilized countries, the rich countries, of which we are no longer one, generally use a pluralistic form of national health care. The money-oriented drugs and surgery faction doesn't exclude other medical personnel. Orthopods, chiropracters, naturopaths and energy healers can all participate if they can show good medical results. In the United States the AMA fights the other guys tooth and nail.
If a $1 drug such as Vitamin C can do the same job as a $100 patented designer drug for a certain ailment, and often without unwanted side effects, Germany's Commission E will test the drug and certify it for certain medical uses. In the States, the AMA regularly tries to use Congress to legally close down the supplement aisle at your health food store. Pill bottles at the health food store already are all forced to carry the label, "This product is not intended to cure any illness" which is exactly the opposite of the manufacturer's and the customer's intention.
The ADA has had a running war with renegade dentists who say "of course mercury leaches out of mercury fillings and poisons people! It's so obvious!" For years the ADA has yanked the medical licenses of any dentist to told the public the simple truth. No license, no dentistry for a lifetime.
Doctors are expensive primarily because it costs half a million to go to medical school, and then they torture the students with up to 100 hour work weeks. We produce a scarce number of tortured fou-fou butchers. To lower medical costs we should flood the market with reasonably competent doctors. Furthermore, we should keep public track of the butchers so that they become unemployed.
There are two separate questions for the public option: First, does the civilized world run an efficient public option. Yes! Second, does the United States run an efficient public option? Sometimes. Medicare was an excellent program once.
--I've heard that Congress has been draining off Medicare funds for other purposes, but I've never seen these claims substantiated.
--In any case, the Social Security / Medicare tax and the income tax should be a single tax. Why should someone making a billion a year pay the same Medicare tax as someone making $100,000/year? Shouldn't the rich guy pay a little more?
--When the army runs the VA, they put wounded soldiers in buildings with rats running around. This is because soldiers can always be commanded to keep their yaps shut. Medicare can't do this to seniors except in the Alzheimer's wards where they can only get away with anything after visiting hours. The other VA outrage was the decade-long designation of 200,000 vets with Gulf War Syndrome as "it's all in their heads". They can do anything to soldiers. If soldiers commit suicide then the VA saves money.
--Then there's the Republican Congress running Medicare. Medicare has slipped from a 100% funded service for seniors to a big donut hole (Medicare Part D). The Medicare Supplementary Insurance industry sprang from zilch, thanks to Congress and various Republican Presidents.
I have a question. Independence Blue Cross (of PA) is technically a non-profit, but it behaves like Cigna, Aetna, Golden Rule... and runs up $billions in "surplus" each year. (and commits recission and plays all sorts of payment and reimbursement games).
The "Blues", if indeed non-profit, could behave like co-ops, turn these profits back to policy holders and blow the for profit companies (that need a 20% margin to pay stockholders and build castles) out of the water. Their mission statements are to provide insurance for everyone. So why do they act like the for-profits?
Because they can.
And they CAN because the regulatory structure is riddled with pro insurance corporation moles. It goes all the way to the attorney general. Welcome to Pennsylvania. They fact is, my "liberal" bastion of Vermont is even worse. We are the "Switzerland" for insurance corporations. Corruption is a very big deal here. Bernie Sanders just won't talk about it. And forget Leahy. But I'll admit states like Texas and Alabama leave us in the dust on corruption.
i'm a "member" of the one existing health care co-op, Group Health of Seattle. Group Health "competes" with the insurance companies by becoming very much like the insurance companies. Skyrocketing rates, "high-deductible" plans, etc.
And as a "co-op", i'm a "member" simply because my employer purchased a Group Health plan for our workforce. i'm not a co-owner like a real co-op. And in the last Group Health election where the members elect the Board of Directors to oversee the business, the voter turnout was less than 1/2 of one percent of members voted, so the membership obviously doesn't feel very invested in the business.
Based on our experience out here in the Northwest USA, having Group Health Co-op in the mix doesn't seem to have slowed down the predatory capitalist model of "health insurance" one bit.
Group Health was founded by idealistic doctors back in the 1940s but as it has grown and grown and grown over the years it has become hard to discern the idealistic roots of the operation. i'm sure many "members" don't even realize they are "members" or that this is a "co-op".
Group Health also now has a business agreement with Kaiser Permanente, another behemoth that has some differences in legal structure from the predatory capitalist corporations but ends up operating on similar principles. GHC and KPS combined are one of the big players on the west coast, and have not exactly transformed the health care landscape.
If someone has more specific information than i do about Group Health and KPS, please share it with the community.
Thank you for sharing your experience!
My thoughts:
The voter turnout is disappointing, but that seems to be more of a commentary on the voters than on insurance companies. For co-ops to work, people need to be actively involved. Perhaps people don't care enough about communal efforts to spend any time on them. A large number of people are principally concerned with what is best for them, rather than the community as a whole. Sadly, I believe that will lead many people away from co-ops and toward private insurance.
The whole issue has been very neatly turned into a devisive debate, very much like other "lesser evil" political campaigns, about which nonsensical system of "value negative" insurance best preserves and sustains "American traditions" of profiting from all human needs and misfortunes.
Behind the great multi-colored barricade of distractions, lies and deceptive "public options", the only important reality is that you are not going to get the only system that makes any sense in terms of either health care or economics.
Why are the networks not putting Potter on? He is a true insider, whistleblower, and highly qualified to critique everything to do with the health care reform debate.
In the current debate, Wendell Potter should be a household name.
The fact that he isn't speaks to the unholy relationship between news, corporate ownership, and the probable inter-relationship of membership of boards of directors across industries. It isn't in the corporate interest to rock this boat with any systemic change. We have the appearance of a discussion, with a lot of heat (coverage of astroturfing, misinformed mobs) and no light (real information about what proposals are). We have the appearance of news, with very little content.
If your friends and family don't know who Wendell Potter is, and what he's saying, that proves my point.
Same with Obama's doctor, David Scheiner, who denounces Obama's plan and promotes single payer. What a great news story! That things got legs a year long! But almost zero coverage, and certainly no raising of Dr. Scheiner, or Wendell Potter, to pundit status. Smells like rotting fish...