Health Care Reform and Insurance Companies

In

• 47

"My name is Wendell Potter, and for twenty years, I worked as a senior executive at health insurance companies, and I saw how they confuse their customers and dump the sick -- all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors."

That's how I introduced myself to the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee on June 24, 2009, and also how I began the first chapter of my book, Deadly Spin, which is out today. I set fire to a lot of bridges when I accepted Sen. Jay Rockefeller's invitation to testify as part of his investigation into health insurance company practices that for years have been swelling the ranks of the uninsured and the underinsured in the United States. With the publication of my book -- the subtitle of which is, "An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out On How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans" -- I am torching a few more.

I describe in the book how a huge share of Americans' health-care premiums bankrolls relentless propaganda and lobbying efforts focused on protecting one thing: profits. I also describe how the industry's PR onslaught drastically weakened health-care reform and how it plays an insidious and often invisible role in our political process anywhere that corporate profits are at stake, from climate change to defense policy.

They're going to kill you, Wendell," a former CIGNA colleague warned in an email after reading a couple of chapters this morning. "If I were you, I wouldn't get anywhere near a cliff." He obviously had read the chapter in which I described the meticulously planned and deception-based strategy the health insurance industry developed and carried out -- with help from one of Washington's biggest PR firms -- to discredit documentary maker Michael Moore and his 2007 movie, Sicko. Because the movie laid much of the blame for the seemingly intractable problems of the American health care system on insurers, the industry I used to work for spent a big chunk of policyholders' premiums on a behind-the-scenes campaign to demonize Moore and to misinform Americans about the health-care systems in Canada and Europe that -- as Moore explained in the movie -- provide coverage for all their citizens and provide high quality care for them at much lower costs than we do in the U.S.

"If Sicko showed signs of being as influential in shaping public opinion on health care reform as An Inconvenient Truth had been in changing attitudes about climate change," I wrote in the chapter entitled, "The Campaign Against Sicko," "then the industry would have to consider implementing a plan 'to push Moore off the cliff,'" as the industry's high-paid PR consultants warned in a secretive meeting of industry executives in Philadelphia shortly after the movie's U.S. premiere. The consultants didn't mean that literally (or at least I don't think they did). Rather, they were assuring the executives that the industry's trade association, America's Health Insurance Plans, would wage an all-out effort to depict Moore as someone intent on destroying the free-market health care system and with it, the American way of life.

Those of us at that Philadelphia meeting knew that the campaign against Sicko would be a warm-up act to the health-care-reform debate that we all knew would begin in Congress as soon as the next president took office.

Few Americans know what a central role the health-insurance industry played in the fear-mongering and anger-mongering campaign against the Democrats' original vision of reform, which included a "public option" that would have competed against private insurance companies and which President Obama said early in the debate was necessary to "keep insurers honest."

Insurers were able to kill the public option and weaken the reform bill, but it couldn't kill it. Despite conventional wisdom, insurers didn't want to kill it because the requirement that all Americans buy private coverage if they're not eligible for a public program like Medicare and Medicaid will ensure their profitability for years to come. They do, however, want to weaken the bill further, which is why the industry funneled millions of policyholders' premiums this year into the campaigns of Republican candidates and round-the-clock advertising based on lies about the new reform law.

I describe this in Deadly Spin, which is why I will not go near any cliffs anytime soon. The reason I wrote the book was not just to pull the curtains back on the devious tactics insurers use to get their way -- in the marketplace and on Capitol Hill -- but to warn about the consequences to our democracy of the ever-increasing power of corporations at a time when the mainstream media is in decline.

The onslaughts of spin will not stop, the distortions will not diminish, and the spin will not slow down. To the contrary, spin begets spin, as the successes of corporate PR functionaries increase the revenues of their employers, further funding their employers' efforts to create a more hospitable climate for their business interests. Americans are thus being faced with increasingly subtle but effective assaults on their beliefs and perceptions. Their best defense right now is to understand and to recognize the sophisticated tactics of the spinners trying to manipulate them.

Most important is a singular mandate: Be skeptical

Halloween, impersonations, and Moscow pic

Happy Halloween. We are having a party at our house with Elizabeth and her friends and Stephen and his friends. We have about 12 or 15 carved pumpkins, chicken soup with rice, sugar cookies, and lots of cool costumes--with people inside. I will send some pics of the party another day. Mary is off to her Final's Club event tonight. She had her Halloween party on Friday night--and she and Jonathan dressed as Wally and Wendy Waldo--from Where's Waldo. Maybe I'll send some pics of that as well--apparently they were quite a hit. Elizabeth has a fabulous costume--she is an elven vampire princess. It suits her perfectly on many levels! Aaron is a wolfman.

Sorry, but I also have to post John Stewart's two impersonations of Glenn Beck--just for posterity. Nov 6, 2009 impersonation and the March, 2010 impersonation. They are amazingly funny, if you're in to that sort of thing. I tried to get the 2010 without the intro, but could not find it. Oh well. Happy Halloween.

PS: I included that gorgeous pic of Moscow because Rand was just there, if I remember correctly.

a remembering table for mother - day of the dead

El dia de los muertos, November 2nd. It's a shame North America does not have such a tradition as Day of the Dead as they do in South America. There are many, many variations on this holiday, but basically it is a time to remember and tell stories about relatives and loved ones who have died--the veil between the living and the dead is supposed to be particularly thin on this day. Usually there is an "altar" that the family decorates with pictures, food, and things that recall the life of an ancestor. Just planning and decorating the altar is an opportunity to recall the life and personality of the loved one. In Mexico there are big family gatherings where family members tell stories about the loved one, and in the evening the family goes to the grave site to have a picnic. Sometimes they keep vigil all night. What a wonderful idea! So much more soul in that celebration than in our somewhat anemic Memorial Day, which evolves each year closer and closer to Vacation Day. Perhaps part of the reason that such a great tradition has not seeped much across the border is that the idea of an altar frightens us. Altars are too closely tied to religion and sacrifice and worship. We don't want to worship our ancestors. That's why I think we should call it a Remembering Table instead of an altar.

So this year I made a remembering table in honor of my mother. I put a few fall leaves on the table, some rocks, a drawing pencil and an apple. I could have put a dozen other items, but I thought I would start small.

With all the beautiful fall leaves, I had been thinking of my mother anyway. Many times we had walked together in my neighborhood in the fall; we could never get very far without stopping to pick up another exquisite fall leaf to take home. Today I headed out on a walk/run and immediately found a very lovely stem of oak leaves. I picked it up and carried it as I ran, feeling a bit like an Olympic runner carrying a torch of bright red leaves. But as I continued on picking up more leaves, the Olympic feeling disappeared--hmm, could be another post? But this was a day for remembering mother, not for imagining grandeur. I came in and put the leaves on my remembering table with the other things. I thought about all the glowing comments made by her art students that I and my siblings had found a few weeks ago written in one of her old school yearbooks. I thought about my mother as a small child, and as a young bride, a young mother, a teacher, a friend, a grandmother and great grandmother.

Halloweening on an empty nest

A few weeks ago Russel asked me what we were going to do for Halloween--now that no kids are at home. I suggested turning off all the lights, locking the doors, and heading to a restaurant. Russ didn't say much, just, "Oh not do Halloween, huh?" But as the day approached he opined that maybe we could get just one pumpkin (he has always carved everyone's pumpkin--with each person's own design) and maybe put up a decoration or two. So we did a few decorations and put out a pumpkin, bought some candy and waited for the trick or treaters. No one came for an hour or so and we mourned the loss of good ol' house-to-house trick or treating. In Knoxville at least, church Halloween parties and trunk or treating have made great efforts to stamp out the unsafe and unholy practice of trick or treating.

But then a few treaters trickled by, and then a few more. We even discovered that three years ago our neighbors in the cul-de-sac just a few doors down had moved! A new family had moved in with two small children. For Halloween, one dressed as an adorable tin man and one as dracula. The young mother had on gorgeous, sparkling, ruby red heels. It was fun to meet our neighbors.

We have had a family Halloween tradition of having chicken soup with rice for dinner before the kids go off in costume--usually with Dad when they were younger. I started this tradition, with ulterior motives, because I knew if you have a full stomach, candy looks ever-so-much less appealing, at least after a couple first, thrilling pieces. And on Halloween night with all the hubbub and getting costumes ready, and meeting up with friends, dinner time can go by unnoticed. The tradition worked well over the years, and, as a good tradition will, ingrained itself into the fabric of the holiday, so that even when the kids were older and had little interest in stopping for dinner anywhere, much less at home, they always felt like they needed at least a small bowl of the soup or they had not had the full Halloween experience.

But this Halloween we ended up having salmon because it had been in the fridge a couple of days and had to be cooked. But next year, I plan on making chicken soup with rice--cooking once, cooking twice, cooking chicken soup with rice!