Healthcare Hero: Wendell Potter

Posted on 09/15/2009 at 6:47 pm by Bob Cesca

Sure, he was once a villain with CIGNA, but now he’s really redeeming himself by fighting hard for reform and the public option. Here’s Potter’s opening statement:

“A public option must be created to provide true choice to consumers or reform will fail to fix the root of the severe problems that have been caused in large part by the greedy demands of Wall Street. By creating a strong public option and restricting the insurance companies’ ability to enrich executives and investors at the expense of taxpayers and consumers, HR 3200 [the House health bill] will truly benefit Americans,” Potter said in his opening statement.

“The Baucus plan, on the other hand, would create a government subsidized monopoly for the purchase of bare bones high deductible policies that would truly benefit big insurance. In other words, insurers would win, your constituents would lose.”

Here’s Speaker Pelosi backing the need for the public option:

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  • kansasdem

    Every time I see the letters C-I-G-N-A I want to puke a little bit!I got hosed by CIGNA on a disability plan and, while it’s complicated, the real “killer” was that I’d moved to a different state after my disability began!Well duh! I couldn’t take care of myself so I had to move so my oldest son could take care of me!And ERISA is a fucking joke!Insurance companies are todays mafia! PERIOD

  • roxsteady

    YES! That’s what we want to hear Nancy! By the way Mr. Potter has now been on Hardball today and Ed Shultz. This moring I was hoping he’d do Rachel or Keith tonight. I’m sure it will be one or the other. Ed had a writer on from RollingStone who discussed his article on the origins of the health care oposition strategy which he said took place on a conference call. He also said that he has emails from these usual suspects, like Freedom Works and others who where sending these congratulatory emails to the astroturf attendees for their “disruption”. He also said that they laid out the strategy from the begining was for Republicans to stall the bill so that they could orchestrate the teabaggers to do just what they did this summer. I’m trying to find this article online but, so far no luck. It’s not that I’m surprised by any of this. It’s just that now that it’s laid out in the open, it could further twist the knife in these phony ass teabaggers and their clearly sponsored outbursts! After Saturday’s epic fail, this is the last thing they want to see the media talking about! I’m sure Rachel will be very interested in this story. She’s done so many on this subject herself!

  • http://www.facebook.com/vtortorici BrunoMachiavelli

    The way I see it, the Public Option is long from dead. The President has consistently been of a mind to find out “what works.” That’s been his constant refrain. He’s been letting the “kids” bicker for a while, and still letting them come up with something to show him. He’s not been dictating what he wants in the bill. OK. He’s expressed a preference.He has said repeatedly, he wants to go with what works. He doesn’t express dictatorial attachment to HOW we get there, just that we do. It just so happens that the Public Option is the best way to get there–he’s just not going to force the matter overtly. I find that to be pretty damn savvy and dare I say, wise.The way I’m interpreting the messaging I’ve been seeing for some time coming from the WH, can be encapsulated as, “We want to affect change in the areas of A,B,C. The Public Option addresses A,B, and C really well, by all respectable assessments. If you have another idea that works better, we’ll go with it.” What’s implied (quite clearly in my opinion) is, “But you probably won’t have a better idea; so, we’ll have a robust Public Option in the final bill I sign.”