The journey I embarked on when I made the decision to leave a successful career in the health insurance business was a spiritual one. I can trace the decision to a true epiphany, to the very moment I saw hundreds of people standing, soaking wet, in long, slow-moving lines, waiting to get medical care that was being provided in animal stalls at a fairground in Wise County, Virginia.
It hit me immediately that had my circumstances been a little different when I was growing up near there, I could have been one of those people. It also hit me that the work I was doing as a spokesman for the insurance industry was making it necessary, at least in part, for those people to resort to such humiliation to get basic medical care. One of my responsibilities was to persuade Americans of the lie that most of the uninsured are that way by choice, that they have shirked their responsibility to themselves and their families. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Our so-called health care "system" had simply left them behind.
I cannot tell you why I felt compelled to drive from my parents home in Kingsport, Tennessee to Wise County -- a distance of about 50 miles -- on that late July day in 2007. What I can tell you is that stretch of U.S. Highway 23 turned out to be my Road to Damascus. For the past few years, I have been dedicated to spreading the truth about how health insurance companies really operate in this country.
Last year my new career attracted the notice of Matthew Heineman, a documentary filmmaker in New York. He and his team interviewed me for a movie, Escape Fire, that premiered Friday at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival here in Park City. I have not seen anything that better captures just how dysfunctional our system really is and how urgent it is for us to transform it.
I was invited to the premier and to be part of a town hall-type discussion with others who were interviewed for the film, including famed cardiologist Dr. Dean Ornish and Dr. Don Berwick, who served until recently as head of the U.S. Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
As fate would have it, I am staying in a hotel with a magnificent view of one of Park City's most famous ski slopes. Had I been here just a few days earlier, I very possibly might have witnessed a tragedy that sent shock waves through the sports world.
While training on that halfpipe slope, Canadian freestyle skier Sarah Burke suffered a torn vertebral artery in her neck that caused bleeding in her brain, an injury that she would die from last Thursday, the day my family and I checked into the hotel. Just 29, Burke was considered a top-flight "acrobat-on-skis," and a medal contender at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia.
Instead, her family will be laying her to rest in her native Canada -- and pleading for money to help cover the estimated $550,000 they owe for the medical care she received at University of Utah Hospital over nine days.
The irony is that had the accident occurred in Canada, her family would not be having to come up with more than half a million dollars to pay for her care. Her care would have been covered because, unlike the U.S., Canada has a system of universal coverage.
An estimated 700,000 American families file for bankruptcy every year because of medical debt. No one in Canada finds themselves in that predicament, nor do they face losing their homes as many Americans do when they become critically ill or suffer an injury.
One of the things my colleagues in the insurance industry tried to get Americans to believe was that Canadians flock to the U.S. to get medical care they cannot get in their own country. That is a myth. Yes, some Canadians come to the U.S. for treatment, but not in large numbers. In fact, polls in Canada consistently show high levels of satisfaction among citizens with their country's single-payer system.
I probably would not have known about a fundraising effort that has been started by Burke's friends had my wife not come across a tweet about it Friday morning. I haven't been able to find anything about it so far in any media here in Utah. There was a report about her accident on the morning news, but no mention of the fundraiser.
I did find information about it in the Toronto Star, which quoted family members as saying they were "moved by the sincere and heartfelt sympathy" expressed by supporters worldwide. It is clear the family needs help. Not only are they grieving, they are facing financial ruin, simply because Sarah Burke's accident was in the United States of America.
I'm certain I would not have known anything about this had I not been interviewed for Escape Fire last year, or invited to come to Park City and stay at a hotel with a window overlooking the last slope Sarah Burke would ever ski. My spiritual journey continues.
For information about how to help the family, visit their page on GiveForward.
Follow Wendell Potter on Twitter: www.twitter.com/wendellpotter
Sarah Burke - Professional Freeskier
Sarah Burke - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Freestyle skier Sarah Burke dies at 29 – USATODAY.com
Sarah Burke dies from injuries suffered in Utah - ESPN
Canadian Freestyle Skier Sarah Burke Dead at 29 - ABC News
BBC News - Canada freestyle skier Sarah Burke dies
Freestyle skier Sarah Burke died 'peacefully surrounded by those ...
In the U.S. many would have had to sell their homes and go bankrupt as 700,000 each year do.
Even many poor and middleclass Americans are voting for the idiocy that is your republican party against their very own interests. In Canada we pay less for healthcare than you do in America and everybody is covered. People do not have to give up their homes or their dreams so insurance companies can freewheel profits and conservatives in your country can protect their ideology even when its been proven to be a total failure as insurance companies have not served the people or the country but rather your protected class of rich and CEO's.
I was unable to buy reasonable insurance coverage due to a childhood injury. I had been working as a consultant, insured under my husband's policy until he died. Despite being a structural engineer with advanced degrees in engineering and physics, as well as being multilingual, I was unemployable.
Few Americans know that potential employers can get access to job applicants' medical histories. One old darling who interviewed me for a job at a family firm explained that if they hired me, my 'pre-existing condition' would cause the company's health insurance premiums to soar.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/05/business/05insure.html?pagewanted=all
After getting a bellyful of lectures on 'shirking responsibility', I'd had enough. I applied for jobs in Europe. Within three weeks I was offered a brilliant position as a senior structural engineer in Glasgow, where my young children and I would be covered under the British NHS.
That was nine years ago. I'm now Company Director. My earnings put me in the top tax band. We're all naturalised citizens of the UK. I have since remarried, had one child, and am due to give birth to another. One of the American-born kids is at Cambridge and the other is studying medicine in France. They all have cute Scottish accents and have learnt Gaelic and Breton, in addition to French.
I would have been shirking responsibility to myself and my family had I remained in the US.
"I don't think the rise in taxes to pay for it would amount to the current cost of insurance premiums, co-pays and deductibleÂs that we pay now."
You are right. We also get home health care, when needed. Doctors make house calls (though we've never needed that.).
My husband is a widower. His wife died of cancer. She chose to die at home. He could work from home, so she was not alone. However, she was very frail and he couldn't give her the physical care she needed. Nurses from the NHS came to the house for palliative care, and NHS aides came to wash her and tend her other physical needs. How much money do you think these short visits saved over intensive end-of-life care in a hospital?
In addition, we get a lot more for our taxes. In Scotland university education is free. IOW, a bright Scottish kid can go to medical school at Glasgow uni at no cost to the kid.
We live near Glasgow Uni, and I see these kids all over the place. I'm proud to pay my taxes and contribute to their care and education.
So my question is, would they have blown through $500K worth of treatment in this case, or would they have been more frugal, since they are spending the public money?
Obama is doing something about the broken American-style health care; unfortunately the tea-party yahoos would not buy it. The insurance companies are making sure that no one listens to Obama.
You make a living by skiing down hills and jumping in the air and doing a bunch of insanely dangerous stunts, but somehow left the major medical coverage off the list?
This is obviously very tragic for everybody. But even in Michael Moore's movie, "Sicko" his Canadian Aunt and Uncle refused to travel to the US for even a few hours without picking up an insurance policy for the day, "just in case."
lastly what of her and her mgr/agent's responsibility to have sufficient coverage for her high risk sport occuring event-wise in a foreign country?
She took a risk, and unfortunately paid dearly for it, now her sponsors can say "oh well", especially since they don't have to pay her family...they insured her as a product, not a person.
she should have had sufficient coverage...as well as her agent/mgr ensuring such...pretty simple don't you think...and this is from a canuck...many canucks up here are pretty divided on this issue too: while we certainly feel for sarah for the tragedy that happened, it's the responsibility of the individual to ensure adequate coverage.
btw, am sure with all the PR, do you think for a moment monster or other sponsors would NOT have stepped up to the plate? did you see the fallout?
You might know this if you EVER strapped in, or purchased a lift ticket.
Get a clue.