I hope she will feel the heat here as I would like to see her grovel for her ridiculos position on health care. She won't say if she supports a public option because she is not sure the votes are there. What the hell is her vote for then...she is a corporate whore accepting the big bucks from PACs and lobbyists. Turn up the heat and keep stoking it higher and higher!

This is a pdf of Wendell Potter's testimony yesterday. He is a former insurance executive:

http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/resources/PotterTestimonyConsumerHealthInsurance.pdf

An excerpt:

I know from personal experience that members of Congress and the public have good reason to question the honesty and trustworthiness of the insurance industry. Insurers make promises they have no intention of keeping, they flout regulations designed to protect consumers, and they make it nearly impossible to understand -- or even to obtain -- information we need. As you hold hearings and discuss legislative proposals over the coming weeks, I encourage you to look very closely at the role for-profit insurance companies play in making our health care system both the most expensive and one of the most dysfunctional in the world.

And another:

When I left my job as head of corporate communications for one of the country’s largest insurers, I did not intend to go public as a former insider. However, it recently became abundantly clear to me that the industry’s charm offensive—which is the most visible part of duplicitous and well-financed PR and lobbying campaigns—may well shape reform in a way that benefits Wall Street far more than average Americans.

A few months after I joined the health insurer CIGNA Corp. in 1993, just as the last national health care reform debate was underway, the president of CIGNA’s health care division was one of three industry executives who came here to assure members of Congress that they would help lawmakers pass meaningful reform. While they expressed concerns about some of President Clinton’s proposals, they said they enthusiastically supported several specific goals.

Those goals included covering all Americans; eliminating underwriting practices like pre-existing condition exclusions and cherry-picking; the use of community rating; and the creation of a standard benefit plan. Had the industry followed through on its commitment to those goals, I wouldn’t be here today.

Today we are hearing industry executives saying the same things and making the same assurances. This time, though, the industry is bigger, richer and stronger, and it has a much tighter grip on our health care system than ever before. In the 15 years since insurance companies killed the Clinton plan, the industry has consolidated to the point that it is now dominated by a cartel of large for-profit insurers.

Here's another gem from his testimony (see above)

The average family doesn’t understand how Wall Street’s dictates determine whether they will be offered coverage, whether they can keep it, and how much they’ll be charged for it. But, in fact, Wall Street plays a powerful role. The top priority of for-profit companies is to drive up the value of their stock.

Stocks fluctuate based on companies’ quarterly reports, which are discussed every three months in conference calls with investors and analysts. On these calls, Wall Street looks investors and analysts look for two key figures: earnings per share and the medical-loss ratio, or medical ―benefit‖ ratio, as the industry now terms it. That is the ratio between what the company actually pays out in claims and what it has left over to cover sales, marketing, underwriting and other administrative expenses and, of course, profits.

To win the favor of powerful analysts, for-profit insurers must prove that they made more money during the previous quarter than a year earlier and that the portion of the premium going
to medical costs is falling. Even very profitable companies can see sharp declines in stock prices moments after admitting they’ve failed to trim medical costs.

I have seen an insurer’s stock price fall 20 percent or more in a single day after executives disclosed that the company had to spend a slightly higher percentage of premiums on medical claims during the quarter than it did during a previous period. The smoking gun was the company’s first-quarter medical loss ratio, which had increased from 77.9% to 79.4% a year later.

To help meet Wall Street’s relentless profit expectations, insurers routinely dump policyholders who are less profitable or who get sick. Insurers have several ways to cull the sick from their rolls.

One is policy rescission. They look carefully to see if a sick policyholder may have omitted a minor illness, a pre-existing condition, when applying for coverage, and then they use that as justification to cancel the policy, even if the enrollee has never missed a premium payment. Asked directly about this practice just last week in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, executives of three of the nation’s largest health insurers refused to end the practice of cancelling policies for sick enrollees. Why? Because dumping a small number of enrollees can have a big effect on the bottom line. Ten percent of the population accounts for two-thirds of all health care spending.1 The Energy and Commerce Committee’s investigation into three insurers found that they canceled the coverage of roughly 20,000 people in a five-year period, allowing the companies to avoid paying $300 million in claims.

They also dump small businesses whose employees’ medical claims exceed what insurance underwriters expected. All it takes is one illness or accident among employees at a small business to prompt an insurance company to hike the next year’s premiums so high that the employer has to cut benefits, shop for another carrier, or stop offering coverage altogether –

I like this ad and we need more of them - one for every hand-wringing Democrat. Publicly call them out for being a pussy. That's what it's going to take.

After I stepped up to do some work around here, I heard my mother's voice, from decades ago when I was in grade school, maybe third grade.

"I don't care what the other kids are doing. I care what you are doing."

We need to be better parents to our child-like Senators and Representatives. It's not popular to vote for reform. DiFi, you job is to be a reflection of your constituents, not your fellow Congresspeople.

Brian...please kick it in gear and start getting some reporting done on Health care reform...lots of critical shit going on and TPM is not covering the issues and getting us the information we need!
Vacation is over!

I'm sending MoveOn my $25... y'all can do the same.