WENDELL POTTER: They do. And that’s why this will not be repealed. They like a lot about it. This legislation, we call it "healthcare reform," but it doesn’t really reform the system. There are a lot of good things in there that does make some of the practices of the insurance industry illegal, things that should have been made illegal a long time ago, so that—
AMY GOODMAN: Like?
WENDELL POTTER:—for that matter, there are good things here. But it doesn’t reform the system. It is built around our health insurance system, as the President said. And they want to keep it in place, because it also guarantees that they will have a lot of new members and billions of dollars in new revenue in the years to come.The Health Care Reform Act (HCR) didn't go far enough but it certainly moved forward. Potter's key point is that the legislation didn't reform the health care system. Of course it didn't. The climate in this country wasn't conducive to totally throwing out the health care system and building a new one from scratch. Anyone who honestly believes that such a massive overhaul was possible in one fell swoop is terribly naive. Congress was never going to pass such a bill in 2010. Change is a process and the more intensive the change, the longer the process. The 13th amendment ended slavery in 1865 but 90 years later Jim Crow laws were the norm. The Brown decisions in 1954 and 1955 said that separate but equal was inherently unequal but my local school system was among those that did not fully integrate until 1971. I don't advocate that change should occur slowly but experience has taught me that it generally does. The question now is what do we do next? There is little to be gained from decrying what wasn't done as we cannot time travel backwards and change anything.
Our most significant problem is that health care is a for profit industry in this country. In spite of the right's constant assertion that the HCR act is socialized medicine, it is far from such. A major obstacle to reform is that Americans have an exceptional fear of anything that even smells of socialism, which most wrongly equate with communism. I don't think that Obama ever stood a realistic chance of getting HCR passed that included a single payer plan or the loosely defined public option.
I don't disagree with the many disappointed progressives who assert that there is an unholy alliance between government and business. I do disagree that nothing has been gained via the current HCR. It's far from perfect but I think that our focus needs to be on generating specific ideas for how we advance the movement to a single payer plan or at minimum a plan that includes a public option. I think that it's important that we, the citizens, develop specifics as to what we want rather than continuing to engage in bemoaning what we do not have. I think that we all need to share ideas and engage in some useful dialog.
From my perspective we have a public that has a significant number of members who continue to believe lunatic ideas such as there are death panels as a result of HCR. There is a general public suspicion that HCR is a socialist plan that will destroy "the greatest health care system in the world." The politicians are playing on those fears. It seems that a key component is mounting a PR campaign to dispel myths and fallacies about what HCR does. I don't think that our side has done PR particularly well in the past and we need to change that
There is also a need to disseminate powerful and clearly stated information about the reality of our health care system; certainly we have highly skilled medical professionals and excellent are in or medical facilities. However, a lot of Americans don't have access to that great health care which I contend makes declaring ourselves to have the greatest health care system in the world meaningless. We have to work on showing the people who are in deep denial that the health care system is broken. We have to redefine what health care is. Ideally the focus of health care should not be profit but providing preventive care and treatment as necessary. It sounds simple, but the opposition to the moderate level of reform of HCR demonstrates that there are a lot of Americans who do not adopt this belief.
We have to deal with the reality of the current beliefs regarding health care reform. We have to take seriously the ongoing opposition expressed against HCR as passed because it's not just elected officials with a vested interest in maintaining their relationships with the insurance industry who oppose HCR, it's also a lot of the people who stand to benefit from health care reform. People who are acting against their own best interests.
By the way, when I say "we" I mean anyone who believes that our health care system does not serve the needs of all of the people and is need of a major overhaul. We have to become the public voices advocating for change. We have to become a public force that can be pointed to as representing a counterpoint to the very loud voices who decried health care reform as President Obama struggled to push through some level of reform. The Republicans continue to insist that the public doesn't want health care reform and they point to the Tea Party and other voices from the right who loudly protest any government input into health care. We are also the public and we need to make our voices heard and not siphon our energies off to engage in supporting third party candidates and sulking in the corner because the road to reform has more curves than we expected.
The Republicans are in for a surprise when they start working to repeal HCR. They will find out that Americans kinda really, really like the idea of having decent health care and if they are dissatisfied with the reform, it's because they think it has not gone far or fast enough (apart from the dreadful mandate).
ReplyDeleteThe wingnuts' hypocrisy on the subject is jarring. You may have heard about this delightful example:
A conservative Maryland physician elected to Congress on an anti-Obamacare platform surprised fellow freshmen at a Monday orientation session by demanding to know why his government-subsidized health care plan takes a month to kick in.
Republican Andy Harris, an anesthesiologist who defeated freshman Democrat Frank Kratovil on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, reacted incredulously when informed that federal law mandated that his government-subsidized health care policy would take effect on Feb. 1 – 28 days after his Jan. 3rd swearing-in.
“He stood up and asked the two ladies who were answering questions why it had to take so long, what he would do without 28 days of health care,” said a congressional staffer who saw the exchange. The benefits session, held behind closed doors, drew about 250 freshman members, staffers and family members to the Capitol Visitors Center auditorium late Monday morning,”.
“Harris then asked if he could purchase insurance from the government to cover the gap,” added the aide, who was struck by the similarity to Harris’s request and the public option he denounced as a gateway to socialized medicine.
I was also struck by the mention, during Charlie Rose's interview last night with Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, co-chairs of the US Deficit Commission, that Paul Ryan, a rabid right-wing congressman from WI and the GOP deficit whiz, has been considering a public option (yes) as a way to seriously curb the US health care expenditures.
Can you imagine? You'd never guessed it from everything the GOPers scream and whine on the subject.
Anyway, check out also this interview with Wendell Potter (and Donna Smith of National Nurses United) on GRITtv Fixing Health Care for Real.
Sheria, Elizabeth, and fellow Zoners,
ReplyDeleteI am still recovering from my recent trip (and ask for your patience until I am fully recovered). Since I am on Michael Moore's email list, I thought this email is worthy of sharing with everyone here:
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Subject: They Said They Would Push Me "Off a Cliff" ...a letter from Michael Moore
Wednesday, November 17th, 2010
Friends,
Yesterday, on the TV and radio show "Democracy Now" hosted by Amy Goodman, the former Vice President of CIGNA, one of the nation's largest health insurance companies, revealed that CIGNA met with the other big health insurers to hatch a plan to "push" yours truly "off a cliff."
The interview contains new revelations about just how frightened the health industry was that "Sicko" might ignite a public wave of support for "socialized medicine." So the large health insurance companies came together over a common cause: Stop the American people from going to see "Sicko" -- and the way to do that was to cause some form of harm to me (either personally, professionally or...physically?).
Take a look at this stunning section of the interview with Wendell Potter:
WENDELL POTTER [former executive, CIGNA]: ...We were concerned that the movie ["Sicko"] would be as successful as "Fahrenheit 9/11" had been. And we knew that if it were, it really would change public opinion about our health care system in ways that would be harmful to the profits of health insurers. So, it was very important for this [attack] campaign to succeed. At one point during a strategy meeting, one of the people from [the insurance companies' public relations firm] APCO said that if our efforts, our initial efforts, were not successful, then we'd have to move to an element of the campaign to push Michael Moore off a cliff. And not meaning to do that literally, but to—
AMY GOODMAN: Are you sure?
WENDELL POTTER: Well, I'm not sure. To tell you the truth, when I started doing what I'm doing [as a whistleblower], I was concerned about my own health and well-being, maybe just from paranoia. But these companies play to win. And we're talking about some big bucks at stake here—billions and billions and billions of dollars.
AMY GOODMAN: So what were they talking about when they said, "If this doesn't work, we're going to push him off the cliff"?
WENDELL POTTER: Well, it would be just an incredibly intense PR effort, if necessary, to spend more premium dollars to defame Michael Moore, to discredit him even more as a filmmaker.
AMY GOODMAN: So, were you doing research on him?
(Part II of this comment ... below)
(Part II)
ReplyDeleteWENDELL POTTER: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: You were going—personally?
WENDELL POTTER: Well, I was a part of the effort. I didn't—that was part of the reason for hiring APCO and to work with a trade association, is that it relieved me of the responsibility of doing that kind of work. You paid for it to be done by people who were experts in doing that kind of research.
AMY GOODMAN: But they were doing an investigation into him personally?
WENDELL POTTER: Well, absolutely. We knew as much about him probably as he knows about himself.
AMY GOODMAN: About his wife, about his kid, about—
WENDELL POTTER: Oh, yeah. You know, it's important to know everything that you might be able to use in some kind of a campaign against someone, to discredit them professionally and often personally.
AMY GOODMAN: And did you use that?
WENDELL POTTER: You use it if necessary.
The interview goes on as Potter reveals how his front group was able to get its talking points and smears into stories in the New York Times and CNN. It is a chilling look inside how easy it is to manipulate our mainstream media -- and just how worried the health insurance companies were that the American people might demand a true universal health care system.
In particular, Potter talks about how they may have succeeded in influencing CNN to run a factually untrue story about "Sicko" by its reporter, Sanjay Gupta (which led to my infamous encounter with Wolf Blitzer and later, an apology from CNN for getting their facts wrong).
Potter believes his work to defame "Sicko" succeeded, as the film didn't end up posting "Fahrenheit 9/11" grosses. To be clear, "Sicko" went on to become the 3rd largest grossing documentary of all time at that point. And as the release of "Sicko" in June of 2007 was the first time since the defeat of Hillary Clinton's healthcare bill in 1994 that the issue of health insurance was brought to the forefront of the national media, I believe it helped to reignite the issue during the 2008 election year by exposing millions of Americans to the truth about the health insurance industry. More than one person on Capitol Hill will admit that "Sicko" was a big help in rallying public support for the compromise bill that eventually passed earlier this year. But I agree, their smear campaign was effective and did create the dent they were hoping for -- single payer and the public option never even made it into the real discussion on the floor of Congress.
(There was really only one reason "Sicko" didn't sell as many tickets as "Fahrenheit" and that was because of a felony that was committed -- a felony that I will discuss for the first time on this site in the coming weeks or months ahead. Stay tuned.)
Please read or watch the entire interview with Wendell Potter. It's a fascinating peek behind the curtain of how corporate America really runs this country. And how if any of us get in their way, then those people must be stopped. It begs the question: Seeing how there's more of us than there are of them, how long will we let their takeover of our democracy continue?
God Bless the Ruling Class,
Michael Moore
P.S. Over the next few days I will continue this examination of the Wendell Potter revelations on "Democracy Now" and in his new book. Please check in to my website.
Health care reform was passed, and while it isn't what we wanted, it was passed. That was step 1. Steps 2 - 250 will be to TWEAK it, until it is finally what it SHOULD be.
ReplyDeleteIt will come to that. But not during my lifetime.
I have been in the health care field for a long time. Being about 10 years older than dirt, I remember when all healthcare facilities were nonprofit only. Everyone had care available to them, health insurance premiums were reasonable and usually paid by your employer and coverage was nearly all inclusive.
ReplyDeleteAnd then someone decided to de-regulate...on the assumption that competition would be a good thing...and that the indsutry would police itself...Well, that worked out swell, didn't it?
You said it right -- an unholy alliance.
ReplyDeleteI don't know this country anymore.
rocky, I think that you're on to something. The deregulation thingy just doesn't produce good results.
ReplyDeleteElizabeth, thanks for the link to the Wendell Potter interview on GRITtv. I am anxious to read Potter's book; his interviews have been eye opening. I had indeed read of Harris' concerns about the delay in his government funded health plan benefits kicking in. He really is lacking in insight as he appears to be clueless as to the irony of his outrage that his insurance coverage will simply be delayed for a month while he joins his fellow Republicans in calling for repeal of legislation that expands accessibility to health care for his fellow citizens.
Octo, those sections of the Potter interview on Democracy Now also caught my eye. I look forward to your insights regarding the box office performance of Sicko. (
Americans will put little pressure on our government to change health care until a majority of them PERSONALLY feel the impact of the failings of the health care system. The one thing I came away from seeing Michael Moore's film, "Bowling for Columbine" is that we are all in this alone. The Tea Bag movement was all about what each one of those individual wanted for themselves; anything that smacks of a "greater good" is Socialism.
ReplyDeleteAs much as we laud the works of the woman who founded "Mothers Against Drunk Drivers" she couldn't have cared less about drunk driving up to the day before her daughter was killed by one.
Until more and more people feel the "sting" of inadequate or no health care, the lucky vocal few will prevail.