Health care reform has them on the run. There’s no doubt about it. If there were, they wouldn’t be pitching this Newsmax survey.

Go ahead. Freep it.

And there are signs that the $1.4 million dollars a day that the insurance/health industry lobby is spending to drown out support for single payer, universal health care isn’t enough.

They’ll have to up the ante.

MSNBC’s Ed Schultz, for example, interviewed former CIGNA executive Wendell Potter. Mr. Potter explained the tactics that the for-profit health care insurance industry uses to control their "medical losses" – that is, insurance company benefit payouts to medical providers for services provided to their premium-paying, insured consumers.

You’re not a conscientious, responsible “insured” health care consumer; you’re a "medical loss" to your for-profit insurance company.

Here’s how Wendell Potter explained your insurance company’s tactics to improve their bottom line for their investors and executives, who get millions of dollars in bonus compensation and golden parachutes.

POTTER: What they’re doing to consumers is, number one – they’re shifting a lot more of the financial burden from them and the employers onto the shoulders of working men and women. And they also are very actively looking at claims when they’re submitted. And they’re acting -- taking action to dump people when they’re sick, either in the individual market or in the small groups.

President Obama announced bedrock principles of real health care reform:

1. Reduce Costs — Rising health care costs are crushing the budgets of governments, businesses, individuals and families and they must be brought under control.

2. Guarantee Choice — Every American must have the freedom to choose their plan and doctor – including the choice of a public insurance option - but has the single payer option benefits and costs been fully explored?

3. Ensure Quality Care for All — All Americans must have quality and affordable health care.

It’s essential to understand that there is a difference between what the Congress is trying to foist on the American public – the so-called "public option," and single-payer, universal health care.

They are very different, and have very different ramifications for us as health care consumers, for our national economy, and for our competitive position in the global economy.

Which plan fulfills President Obama’s bedrock principles?

Let’s take a look.

Reducing Costs:

• In the absence of reform, we found that health care expenditures would likely rise from their current level of 18 percent of GDP to 28 percent in 2030 and 34 percent in 2040.
• If it can provide affordable and universal coverage and access to care — which at the very least requires accepting all applicants (guaranteed issue) and moderating the variation in premiums by more effectively pooling risk (larger universal insurance pools and community rating) AND somehow controlling costs including excess profit and overhead (15-18% for the privates, 4% for Medicare) it will be attacked. If it reduces Health Insurance and Pharma corporate profits and control it will be attacked.
• Businesses – Because of their higher health care costs, small businesses are far less likely to provide health insurance for their workers than larger businesses. Only 49 percent of firms with 3 to 9 workers and 78 percent of firms with 10 to 24 workers offered any type of health insurance to their employees in 2008. In contrast, 99 percent of firms with more than 200 workers offered health insurance. Consistent with this pattern, 29 percent of non-elderly adult workers at firms with fewer than 25 employees were uninsured in 2007. In that same year, just 10 percent of workers in firms with 500 or more employees were uninsured. Workers at small firms that do offer health insurance also tend to have less generous plans than workers at large firms.

  Individuals and families – Think of it this way, as the graph below shows: any wage increases you earn in the coming years will be taken away by spiraling health care costs – premiums you pay to continue your health insurance - with the 30% administrative costs that the "public option" promises.

  

  Guaranteeing Choice:

  Here’s what single payer advocates are up against:

  "First, it is difficult to envision a solution to the problem of the uninsured which does not involve in some way the private insurance industry...The health insurance industry in the United States has revenues of over $500 billion per year, making it a very concentrated interest that would have to be defeated to move to nationally provided health insurance."

  How do you counter an industry with revenues of $500 billion per year, with costs to consumers doubling every 9 years? One with a history of continuously increasing premiums to assure profit for investors, bonuses and golden parachutes for executives, and to pay the battalions of clerks employed to maximize profits by rejecting claims, through, er, minimizing "medical losses?"

  

  It’s done by telling our President and our Congressional Representatives that we know the scam they’re trying to pull off. Imagine if the 47 million uninsured and under-insured Americans told them their personal stories, and told them that their employment futures - your vote - depended on single-payer health care. Let's tell them.

  Ensure Quality Care for All

  We carry car insurance to protect ourselves from other drivers’ mistakes, and insurance companies profit when we don’t file claims. We have health insurance to protect ourselves, and given our human condition, sooner or later, we all get ill, or have a life-threatening accident, and die. The odds are against us, and clearly favor the health insurance industry. It's a sucker bet.

  So that’s the obvious difference between the two types of insurances?

  As Wendell Potter explained, the third way that health insurers control their "medical losses" and thus maintain their attractive profit margins for investors and executives is to dump people when they are sick.

  Sweet. When you are most vulnerable, least able to fight for yourself, when you need their services the most, the health insurance industry dumps you.

  And the result? Medical bills underlie 60% of bankruptcies.

  And that is what the "public option" is designed to do: it’s a financial bonanza for the insurance companies. Health insurance companies would have a captive consumer base - mandated by law - and consumers who would be fined for for not buying their product.

  Business has already figured out that it’s cheaper to pay the fine than to pay the premiums to provide the insurance to their employees. And who will pay the fine?

  Everyone of us, in everything we purchase. That cost will be passed on to us, the consumers, and our fellow working Americans will still not have adequate health insurance coverage for themselves and their families. But, they still will need medical care. They will still be at risk of financial catastrophe for our mutual shared physical vulnerabilities of disease and accident.

  President Obama used to support a single-payer option, before he didn’t. He told us we needed to take back the White House, and the Senate, and the House.

  We did it.

  Just like FDR, he has said we need to "make him do it."

  Tell him you support single-payer health plan.

  Yes, we can! Make him do it!