The real death panels
| By Robert Cruickshank, Courage Campaign - Aug 19th, 2009 at 1:01 pm PDT |
| Also listed in: Courage Campaign Staff |
Over the last few days it has become quite clear that the initiative in health care reform is passing to us. Progressive activists have become organized and energized to ensure that the public option, itself the minimally acceptable compromise, remains a part of the health care bill. Thanks to the work of Caliticians like David and Dante Atkins, Bob Brigham, and the rest of the progressive netroots, we are now having a great deal of success at drawing a firm and hard line.
Of course, we also must remember the reasons why a public option matters. A strong public health insurance option that any American can choose to join is one of the only ways to ensure that the private insurance companies remain honest.
Particularly because the private insurers have been operating their own "death panels" for some time now. As we saw in the high-profile cases of Nataline Sarkisyan and Nick Colombo health insurance companies routinely deny coverage and care to insured patients once they get a terminal illness.
One such patient was Patsy Bates. The Courage Campaign decided to dramatize her story last year in an ad we call Insurance Jive - the impenetrable language of insurance companies that obscures their deadly effect.
Today the Courage Campaign relaunched that video in order to provide a strong visual message about the need to act for the public option. Wendell Potter, a former Cigna executive who has been making the rounds explaining his insiders' view about why we need major health care reform in America, wrote an email to our members calling on them to watch the video and to call their members of Congress to shore up support for the public option.
The video and click-to-call action is Courage Campaign's contribution to the broad progressive netroots mobilization on behalf of real health care reform. Make no mistake, the public option is at best a compromise position, and only a halfway step toward full single-payer care. But it is important that we win this fight and show the insurance companies for what they really are - a danger to our very survival.
Below the flip is the email Wendell Potter sent to our members today.
Of course, we also must remember the reasons why a public option matters. A strong public health insurance option that any American can choose to join is one of the only ways to ensure that the private insurance companies remain honest.
Particularly because the private insurers have been operating their own "death panels" for some time now. As we saw in the high-profile cases of Nataline Sarkisyan and Nick Colombo health insurance companies routinely deny coverage and care to insured patients once they get a terminal illness.
One such patient was Patsy Bates. The Courage Campaign decided to dramatize her story last year in an ad we call Insurance Jive - the impenetrable language of insurance companies that obscures their deadly effect.
Today the Courage Campaign relaunched that video in order to provide a strong visual message about the need to act for the public option. Wendell Potter, a former Cigna executive who has been making the rounds explaining his insiders' view about why we need major health care reform in America, wrote an email to our members calling on them to watch the video and to call their members of Congress to shore up support for the public option.
The video and click-to-call action is Courage Campaign's contribution to the broad progressive netroots mobilization on behalf of real health care reform. Make no mistake, the public option is at best a compromise position, and only a halfway step toward full single-payer care. But it is important that we win this fight and show the insurance companies for what they really are - a danger to our very survival.
Below the flip is the email Wendell Potter sent to our members today.
My good friend Wendell Potter, a former head of corporate communications for CIGNA -- one of California's largest health insurance companies -- asked us to share this message with the Courage Campaign community. After many years of defending the health insurance industry, Wendell is now an outspoken supporter for health care reform.
Rick Jacobs
Chair, Courage Campaign
Dear Robert --
For 20 years, I defended what some might call "death panels," operated by the health insurance industry, which denied health care coverage to people who needed it.
As head of corporate communications for one of the nation's largest health insurance companies, I had to find new and creative ways to defend an industry with a profit incentive to deny, drop or delay health care coverage. I was very good at creating language -- what my friends at the Courage Campaign call "insurance jive" -- that justified the harm we were causing to families across the nation.
I spoke "insurance jive" as well as I could. Then, one day in 2007, I saw hundreds of Americans waiting in the rain for hours in Virginia to get free medical care they otherwise could not afford. My conscience told me I had to stop. So I quit my job and began to speak out for real health care reform.
My experience in the insurance industry taught me that the only way we will stop the insurance companies from denying coverage to sick and dying Americans is to keep them honest with a strong public health insurance option. If more Americans have the option to receive health insurance from the government -- like Medicare -- competitive pressure on the private insurers will force them to clean up their act.
That's why I'm proud to introduce the Courage Campaign's powerful "Insurance Jive" video, which dramatizes the true story of a California patient who had her insurance policy canceled after she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
"Insurance Jive" shows that insurance companies actually operate de facto "death panels" -- and demonstrates why we must demand that a strong public option be included in health care reform.
Click here to watch this powerful 40-second online video. Then forward this message to your friends and ask them to watch "Insurance Jive" as well. The more people see it, the more we can spread the progressive message that health care reform is desperately needed:
http://www.couragecampaign.org/InsuranceJive
The health insurance industry is spending millions of dollars lobbying Congress to kill the public option. They know that a strong public option will force insurers to cut costs and ensure that patients get the health care they need. Only competition from public insurance can keep the private insurers honest.
The Obama Administration has been sending mixed signals on the public option in recent days. But progressive organizations and blogs including ProgressiveCongress.org, Democracy for America, CREDO Mobile, MoveOn.org and Firedoglake -- and netroots activists including Californians David and Dante Atkins and Howie Klein -- are leading the fight to save the public option.
This growing movement is keeping the public option alive. By making sure our representatives oppose any bill without a strong public option, we can increase pressure on the White House to continue to fight for the public option as well.
It takes just a minute to watch "Insurance Jive" and forward it to your friends. It takes just one more minute to use the Courage Campaign's easy "click-to-call" tool to tell your Congressmember to support the public option. Click here to watch the video and make a call now:
http://www.couragecampaign.org/InsuranceJive
Thank you for helping us put an end to insurance jive.
Wendell Potter
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Here are a few stories about what I have seen in the healthcare controversy. I'm no expert but I know what I've experienced and am certain many of you have some true stories too. My sister was diagnosed at 59 with Leukemia. Of course, we tried everything and did everything her oncologist told us to do. She went down hill fast, the meds and the treatments were destroying her quality of life. Alas, we continued, in denial that something was going to make her better. By the time my sweet sister passed her 60th birthday she was gone. It was one hospital stay after another, for one infection after another and the life savings she had disappeared along with her. She cleaned nursing homes for slightly over 30 years, earning minimum wage but was able to save enough to send her nephew to college. She never got to see that. Her job dropped her; she was forced on to Cobra at an outrageous premium and battled the insurance companies to pay her bills until the day she asked to be put on Hospice. She was on Hospice less than 24 hours when she died. All the toxic med prescribed killed her. To this day I regret having agreed to procedures that were doing nothing but making fat cats richer and destroying a beautiful life with a horrific end. It was clear by then that nothing was going to save her or make her life any better.
That was in March of 2007. In June of 2007 my dad passed on. God bless him at 83 he had to bury his daughter and live without his wife for 18 years. Mom died, like we all should be so blessed, in her sleep. She had a fatal heart attack in the days when "women do not have heart attacks". The poor dear was in the emergency room the afternoon that she died complaining of back pain but nothing was done for her. How ironic, huh? They could have made a bundle on her, keeping her alive when God was calling for her to "Go Home". Anyway, back to dad. He lived a good life but part of him died when his wife did. Seven years ago he was diagnosed with very early stage colon cancer. He went through surgery and we thought he was in remission for 5 years. That was not so. His cancer by then had spread to his lungs, bones and brain. With that diagnosis, he asked if he'd get better with any treatments available. The doctors tried to sell him on all kinds of chemo-treatments, newly released medications and everything else under the sun. The final decision was made when he asked if he'd ever get better. The answer was "no". It would progress until one of his many, many health issues took him out. He opted for palliative care and lived 2 more years in agony and with no quality of life. He would ask me many times, "Sam, why am I taking these 20 different pills 3 and 4 times a day? I had to lie through my teeth and tell him it was for his comfort. I still regret that. Meds for stabilizing blood pressure, diabetes (which he never had), and a host of other things that had nothing to do with comfort were given only to keep him alive and run up the tab. My dad was a saint. He was a Quartermaster 1C during WWII. He joined the Navy on Pearl Harbor Day at 16 and my grandmother had to sign him in. He worked hard, made a great life for his wife and family, retired from 2 different careers. This very active man ended up pooping in his Depends because he couldn't even get out of bed for 2 years. It's not like I wanted my dad dead. I just wanted him comfortable and to let God choose his rightful time.
A more personal story happened to me this year. In January I thought I had a bad allergy episode that ended up in my chest. I saw 3 different doctors because my primary was always too busy to fit me in. It's the old QUANTITY vs QUALITY! My fever was 104 which is serious at 51 years of age. I was dehydrated, had chest pain, and difficulty breathing. None of the 3 physicians ever requested a chest x-ray or blood workup but did run up tremendous doctor visit charges. Finally one day it was too much. I went to the emergency room and was told I had been misdiagnosed and actually had severe pneumonia. I was admitted sometime in February and placed on antibiotics to clear the pneumonia. The conditions at the hospital were unbearable, unsanitary and unprofessional. I voiced these concerns to the "patient advocate" and was discharged shortly thereafter. I still had pneumonia but "…was getting better", my white cells were still very high but would clear up after I was sent home with oral antibiotics. Not long after that I was back in the emergency room with the same symptoms as before. Why I went back to the same hospital, I don't know but I thought, "They screwed up and needed to fix things". A surgical consult with a doctor from another hospital revealed that I had an empyema that needed to be removed. The surgeon would not allow me to be anywhere in that hospital except the ICU. He feared staph, MRSA, CDIFF or some other superbug that was known to be common in this hospital. I had my empyema removed March 1st and was released on oxygen and very powerful intravenous antibiotics to be administered at home. I would have been able to save this second visit to the hospital if someone besides the insurance company was calling the shots. Three more times I ended up in the hospital (a different one this time) for dehydration, blood clots, and finally renal failure. Was this just to run up over $300,000 in medical and pharmaceutical bills? It turned out to be just one bad insurance company decision after another. The doctors basically had their hands tied. I have been in the hospital 5 times between February and May but should have been cared for and recovered after the very first stay. It's August and I continue to negotiate the problems with insurance payments, medical billing offices and the New Mexico Public Regulatory Commission's Insurance Division. When will it ever end? When can we start having affordable health and prescription coverage for all that's based on RESULTS RATHER THAN CORPORATE PROFITS? Find out which of your elected officials are in bed with the lobbyists of those who are "The Death Panel". Thanks for coining the term, Ms. Sarah "Quitty" Palin!