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To the Editor:tmt play

Re “Why I Quit My Job as a Health Insurance Executive,” by Wendell Potter (Opinion guest essay, Dec. 20):

The problems with private health coverage are not things that marginal changes can fix. They are inherent in the system. Health insurance corporations don’t make money by providing care; they make money by denying payment. They benefit if a high-cost patient gets fed up and takes their business to another company.

The only answer is public universal health coverage, sometimes called “improved Medicare for all.” Washington is certainly not likely to provide that. Fortunately, states can lead the way, as they have since the founding of America.

Free public education, the abolition of slavery, labor laws, anti-discrimination laws and many other forward-looking policies began at the state level.

Richard N. GottfriedNew YorkThe writer is a retired member of the New York State Assembly and chair of its Health Committee.

To the Editor:

Having spent the last 20 years in the health insurance space, I find this essay to be a misleading cheap shot at the insurance industry. Surely health insurance is not perfect, but the industry cares for hundreds of millions of Americans while navigating an exceptionally complex system.

What Wendell Potter describes as “consumerism” does not tend to improve Cigna shareholder value by reducing medical costs. More than 80 percent of Cigna’s employee-sponsored enrollees are covered through self-funded employer groups. In other words, the employer assumes full risk for medical expenses and the leftover funds accrue to the employer, not Cigna. Self-funded high-deductible health plans are an effort to shift medical costs from employers to their employees.

The plaintiffs — who include Wendy Davis, a former Democratic state senator, along with a Biden campaign staff member and the bus driver — also testified, saying that the rolling road protest had been frightening and intimidating.

His lawyers admitted that he had carried out the shooting, but they said he was so unwell at the time that he could not know that what he was doing was wrong.

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