The Truth Comes Out About Insurers Fighting National Healthcare for Years

The truth has come out at last about how the big insurers mounted large campaigns to defeat previous attempts to institute a national healthcare plan. If you have not seen or read Bill Moyers' interview with Wendell Potter, a former exec with Cigna health care, then go there now.

Mr. Potter tells of how he finally had an epiphany in mid-2007, after years of working for Cigna. "I was beginning to question what I was doing as the industry shifted from selling primarily managed care plans, to what they refer to as consumer-driven plans. And they're really plans that have very high deductibles, meaning that they're shifting a lot of the cost off health care from employers and insurers, insurance companies, to individuals. And a lot of people can't even afford to make their co-payments when they go get care, as a result of this. But it really took a trip back home to Tennessee for me to see exactly what is happening to so many Americans."

He heard about a health care expedition that was being held down the road, while he visited relatives back in Wise, Virginia. He decided to go there, and take pictures. He had no idea what he would see, but he had a vague idea that it would be a public clinic for people without insurance.

What he saw were people being treated in animal stalls at a Wise County Fairground. Some patients were on gurneys. People had come from miles around, from Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee. "There could have been people and probably were people that I had grown up with. They could have been people who grew up at the house down the road, in the house down the road from me. And that made it real to me. It was absolutely stunning. It was like being hit by lightning. It was almost-- what country am I in? I just it just didn't seem to be a possibility that I was in the United States. It was like a lightning bolt had hit me."

Nevertheless, Potter did not know what to do about the fact that real human beings had no health care access.

Potter also related what happened when the film "Sicko", by Michael Moore, came out. He saw the film himself and felt that Moore was pretty accurate in depicting the situation as it really is. However, he participated in the industry effort to dampen political reaction to the film for fear that it would fuel a real effort to institute a national health care plan.

(from the interview)
BILL MOYERS: And there was a political strategy. "Position Sicko as a threat to Democrats' larger agenda." What does that mean?

WENDELL POTTER: That means that part of the effort to discredit this film was to use lobbyists and their own staff to go onto Capitol Hill and say, "Look, you don't want to believe this movie. You don't want to talk about it. You don't want to endorse it. And if you do, we can make things tough for you."

BILL MOYERS: How?

WENDELL POTTER: By running ads, commercials in your home district when you're running for reelection, not contributing to your campaigns again, or contributing to your competitor.

This is the truth about why, in spite of poll after poll that shows the majority of Americans favor a national healthcare program, we still have none and Europe and other countries have had national healthcare for nearly a century.

The full story and links to more is at Moyers' PBS website, at http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07102009/watch2.html

You can also view Wendel Potter's congressional testimony online or read the text. At Commerce Dept. site on dot gov: http://commerce.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.LiveStream&Hearing_id=6f02dcc8-ad5b-445c-81ca-36c9b06ebdd5

In addition, the Frank Lutz memo strategizing opposition to health care reform Bill Moyers mentions in the interview. -- RAN in Politico: www.politico.com/static/PPM116_luntz.html