Thread by @doctorow

In a recent and important essay, @mariafarrell wrote about the road-to-Damascus conversions that ex-techies are having in which they recant the damaging product design work they did and begin to campaign against their former employers.

conversationalist.org/2020/03/05/the…

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Farrell noted that these techies had missed an important step in their transformation from venal attention mercenaries to noble attention freedom-fighters: they had yet to hit bottom, to truly repent their earlier sins.

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They skipped like stones over the waters of privilege, and never sank, unlike so many of their victims.

Contrast those journeys with that of @wendellpotter, the former @Cigna exec turned whistleblower, who has devoted decades of his life to revealing dirty tricks and lies.

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Potter campaigns tirelessly - and shrewdly - for #MedicareForAll, and is always at pains to point out that the anti-M4A talking points his adversaries parrots were all developed by him, when he was on the wrong side of history.

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Take this thread, rebutting @JoeBiden's FUD about M4A, delivered in the midst of a pandemic that has been worsened by the 77 million un- and underinsured people who can't get care or screening and disproportionately work in food-service and cleaning.

https://twitter.com/wendellpotter/status/1237438497218105344

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As Potter points out, Biden's assertion that M4A costs $35T is just a lie. Once you factor in the savings of not paying for private healthcare, M4A SAVES at least $450B/year.

thelancet.com/journals/lance…

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Biden's plan to cap premiums on a public option at 8.5% of your income is more than double what M4A would cost you. The corporate plans Biden lionizes shackle good workers to bad employers, and put millions at risk of having their care arbitrarily withdrawn or limited.

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And, of course, private care doesn't cover much. Surprise bills, deductibles, co-pays, out-of-pockets... Our plan - a blue-chip employer's top-of-the-line Cigna plan - costs us $24K/year.

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We're rationing our family's health care because in addition to the $20K/year we're paying out of pocket, Cigna refused to cover a pain procedure that my doc - the most-cited pain doc working in California, who runs a major university pain clinic - says I would benefit from.

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That procedure might let me get a good night's sleep for the first time in 15 years and allow me to live a more normal, pain-free life. But because Cigna won't cover it, it would cost $55K, which we do not have. So I'm foregoing it.

/eof