Thread by @wendellpotter

This makes my blood boil.
nytimes.com/2019/11/08/us/…

Wise, Virginia is where I visited a Remote Area Medical event more than a decade ago and was struck by a bolt of lightning.

I saw the people I grew up with being treated in animal stalls because they could not afford their health care.

I saw children having their teeth pulled in barns, people having their blood drawn in a fairground.

I knew then I had to leave my high-paying job at @Cigna and fight to change our broken health care system.

More than a decade later, the local hospital is doing what so many nationwide have done: started suing patients who cannot pay by the thousands.

I know why this is happening. I’m complicit in it. In the late 2000s, we at insurance companies started working to shift people into high deductible plans.

I left in disgust as this model took hold. As predicted, that model has worked great for health insurance companies — as patients pay more out of pocket, they’re on the hook for less.

But this is the consequence: tens of millions of American families finding they cannot afford a doctor or hospital. And now, if they go to the hospital and can’t pay, it doesn’t end there.

They get taken to court.

@BalladHealth can’t be let off the hook here. But at the end of the day, they’re operating as one would expect in this system.

They’re maximizing profits.

With #MedicareForAll, my fellow southwest Virginians and East Tennesseans wouldn’t be *dragged into court* because they can’t pay after they see a doctor.

We have to take premiums, deductibles and co-pays out of the equation, and take health insurance companies out of the equation. Only then can we end this despicable practice and lower costs to save family’s finances and their lives.

My heart goes out to my people in Wise, Virginia. And I’m not going to stop making #goodtrouble until we win those folks #MedicareForAll.

Thanks to @sarahkliff for this timely, well reported and compelling story.