Small Business

One of the things about being a small business person is that you really do want to offer health care to your employees. The public option would help small business development enormously.

Executive testmony

Wendell Potter, former health industry executive, explains how the industry cheats customers.

15 years ago, when reform was last on the table, 95% of the money collected in premiums went to pay for health care. Now it is less than 80%. The term for this value is the "medical-loss ratio." As Ezra says, this is a telling construction. It means they regard paying medical reimbursements is a cost.

George Lakoff made a similar point in an interview I had with him. In most businesses, the more your customers demand, the better off you are. This is true for people who make good things, like high butterfat ice cream, and people who provide services to correct bad things, like autobody shops. In the case of a health insurance company, the incentive is reversed. Providing services reduces your profits. And that is why we are where we are today.

Humor

Or, actually, reality.

Ezra's 101

On this one, Ezra Klein explains how a public plan works in a bloggershead discussion.

Lies Refuted

Here Howard Dean knocks down all the Frank Luntz talking points that Norah O'Donnell recites to him.

No Coverage

This is not a video, but a National Public Radio Fresh Air podcast. Karen Tumulty discusses her brother's case of losing his individual catastrophic insurance coverage when he became very ill.

KT (as she calls herself in Swampland comments) is reprising her TIME cover story on her brother's difficulties.

Public Option

This one, from HCAN, is a simple advocacy ad. But it summarizes the case very nicely.

Recission

I am going to start collecting videos documenting all that is wrong with the current health care system, and and/or advocating a public option.

This one features insurance company executives saying they indeed retroactively rescind converage when a customer turns out to have a serious and expensively treated medical problem. That is, they collect premiums from their customers until they get really sick, then they comb through their medical records to find a reason to remove their coverage.