Notes on Wendell Potter, and Why Companies Support the Individual Mandate
The current debate about the individual mandate reminded me to post this –
About a year ago, I had the opportunity to hear Wendell Potter, author of Deadly Spin – an insider’s sharp critique of the insurance industry, speak at a meeting of the New York Metropolitan Chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program. Despite the cold, dark winter night and midtown dreariness of the meeting location, the large lecture room was packed. I arrived well before Potter’s presentation but couldn’t get a copy of his book; they’d sold out.
The meeting was instructive: I got a sense of Potter’s personal story (he’s from Tennessee, and lived for a while in Appalachia), his previous career (he worked as a journalist, turned to marketing, eventually led PR for Cigna) and his perspective on how people in the health care industry use language to frame the debate on health care reform. Since 2009, when he left his position at Cigna, he writes and speaks critically about the insurance industry.
Potter made several points that clarified my understanding of the insurance companies’ support of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and why many business-minded sorts are adamant about the individual mandate component in the law.
Insurance companies can’t make a profit without the individual mandate unless they deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, he explained. ”Think about it,” he said. “If young and healthy people aren’t going to buy insurance, and insurance companies can’t refuse to cover those with pre-existing conditions, the companies would be responsible only for providing health care to people who choose insurance, including everyone who is sick.”
“Most Republicans who say they favor repeal are disingenuous in that,” he said. “They’re using a smoke screen tactic to persuade the public that they’re against the legislation, but really they support it,” he told. “The insurance companies need it to stay in business,” he added.
The new legislation will also serve most large providers of health care services. That’s because without reform, more and more Americans will go without any insurance. “If you keep shifting the costs of health care to consumers, they won’t buy it,” he said. And without insurance, most people can’t afford all but the most essential medical services – if those.
So the individual mandate assures that the insurance industry can remain profitable. And it serves the health care industry by maximizing the number of healthy people who will participate in health care spending.
In other words (ES): The health care industry needs health care to be affordable to many “consumers.”
All for now –
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