The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #122219   Message #2687562
Posted By: McGrath of Harlow
26-Jul-09 - 05:00 PM
Thread Name: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
That link GUEST gave there didn't work - this one does http://www.charlierose.com/

Whether it's worth following up I don't know, because I haven't watched it yet.

But I have read this article in today's Observer (London), about the testimony of a former health insurance executive who developed a conscience when he visited a free field hospital for poor people in Virginia, and resigned - and it's well worth reading :

Whistleblower tells of America's hidden nightmare for its sick poor

...People queued in long lines to have the most basic medical procedures carried out free of charge. Some had driven more than 200 miles from Georgia. Many were treated in the open air. Potter took pictures of patients lying on trolleys on rain-soaked pavements.

For Potter it was a dreadful realisation that healthcare in America had failed millions of poor, sick people and that he, and the industry he worked for, did not care about the human cost of their relentless search for profits. "It was over-powering. It was just more than I could possibly have imagined could be happening in America," he told the Observer.

Potter resigned shortly afterwards. Last month he testified in Congress, becoming one of the few industry executives to admit that what its critics say is true: healthcare insurance firms push up costs, buy politicians and refuse to pay out when many patients actually get sick. In chilling words he told a Senate committee: "I worked as a senior executive at health insurance companies and I saw how they confuse their customers and dump the sick: all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors."