Rob Kall: Yet Obama is treating them with trust and respect. What advice would you give to Obama?
Wendell Potter: That he's abiding by the old adage of "Keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer." And I'm hoping that maybe that's what he's doing. That he realizes that these folks are not his friends. They're trading favor with him, and promising that they're coming to the table with solutions. I just hope that he realizes that they cannot be trusted and that the solutions that they have in mind would make matters worse, not make matters better for the American people.
Rob Kall: Now, you start off here in your testimony, talking about how what we have now, instead of a government-run system, is a Wall Street-run system. Could you go into that a little bit?
Wendell Potter: I will. The companies that I worked for grew very rapidly over the years that I worked for them. They both are for-profit health insurance companies. In the early '90's, most people who had insurance were enrolled in plans that were not for profit, but over the last fifteen years there's been a consolidation in the industry and now the industry is dominated by seven very large, for-profit health insurance companies. One out of every three Americans is now enrolled in some kind of a health plan managed by one of those seven health insurance companies.
Rob Kall: What are they?
Wendell Potter: Those companies are WellPoint, United, Aetna, Cigna, Humana, HealthNet and Coventry. Those are the seven largest. There are some that are smaller than that that have a fair number of enrollees, as well. But those seven are very big and they're all investor-owned and their first allegiance is to the shareholders who own them. And it's not just you and me. As someone who owns stock, we might own stock in these companies, but by and large, the largest shareholders for these companies are huge institutional investors and hedge funds--hedge fund managers. So, they're the ones who are calling the shots at these companies and, indirectly, how we get our insurance and what benefits we have available to us and how much the premiums cost.
Rob Kall: Now, you said they take up about thirty percent of the market?
Wendell Potter: They do. If you consider that we have about three hundred million or so many Americans, of those seven the total enrollment is about a hundred million. And some of those enrollees are in government-funded plans already-Medicare Advantage is the program that has been created over the last several years in which these companies offer Medicare care to senior citizens. And also, a lot of states have turned over their Medicaid programs to these companies. So a lot of people who are enrolled in the public programs like Medicaid are actually being managed by for-profit managed care companies.
Rob Kall: Interesting. I interviewed John Conyers a couple of months ago, talking about his single-payer [HR676] health plan, and he told me that it would be possible within a single-payer plan to have private insurers involved in the management and providing specific services. So, it's already happening.
Wendell Potter: It's already happening. Yeah, the for-profit companies are very entrenched into the government programs and have been for several years.
Rob Kall: Okay. But that leaves, if they say there are forty-seven million uninsured, that leaves a hundred and fifty some million more people who are insured, by, what? The Blues or what? What is the percentage that these "non-profit" insurers are covering?
Wendell Potter: Well, you have to ___________________ the population. A fair number of people are enrolled in Medicare and some Medicaid plans that are not managed by these companies. I don't know the exact number right off the top of my head, but you've got some senior citizens and some fair number who are enrolled in just straight Medicare and you get a lot of children who are now enrolled in the state children's health insurance plans. Several million children are enrolled in those plans. Again, some of those, however, are managed by for-profit managed care companies. But, your point is correct. Some of the BlueCross/BlueShield plans do cover the remainder.
But one thing you need to keep in mind is that a lot of the BlueCross/BlueShield plans are now for-profit. They're not the same kind of plans that they were several years ago, certainly not when I was growing up. One of the biggest companies that I mentioned a little while ago, WellPoint, has grown to be as big as it is, in fact it is the largest now in the Country in terms of enrollment with well over thirty million members. They have bought a lot of these BlueCross plans and have turned them into for-profit companies. So, it's a huge for-profit organization made up of BlueCross/BlueShield plans from coast-to-coast.
Rob Kall: How can you tell whether it's a BlueCross/BlueShield plan that's for-profit or not?
Wendell Potter: Well, it's hard to find out. You can probably find out something on their website as to whether they continue to have a non-profit status and who owns them. For example, BlueCross of California, one of the biggest in the Country is owned by WellPoint. So is BlueCross of Georgia.
Rob Kall: How about here in Pennsylvania?
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