The Ultimate Irony: Health Care Industry Adopts Big Tobacco's PR Tactics

Dear Mr. Potter:

We are bombarded every day on TV with Republican talking heads, spouting about socialism and 'government take-over' of health care. We see carefully-crafted paid messages from our friends in the health insurance money machine, warning about impending doom for our country if that dangerous Socialist has his way with health. Most of this is paid for out of profits that insurance companies made from our outrageous payments for our health care.

On the other side of the issue, we often see Democrats quoted on the news, talking about the mechanics of getting passage for a bill about which we know almost nothing. We know they've been wrangling over something, but what exactly, nobody tells. Yes, of course we hear about no denials for pre-existng conditions, affordability, and quite a lot of blather about costs and how to pay them.

I think there should be some simple way to raise and sharpen problem awareness. To present some few bare facts about American health care, touted by many as the best in the world. Not just some emotional advert intoning "we really need health care, now!" Put the facts out for all to see, for example:

1. Health care expenditure, per capita in our country compared to some other developed nations, such as France, UK, Germany, Japan.

2. Approximate amount of that huge number that is burned up in administrative costs, compared, if possible to the countries enumeratred above. In our case, comparative percentages of Medicare vs. the profit-oriented insurers.

3. A ranking of life expectancy and infant mortality, in the same list of countries.

ARE WE GETTING WHAT WE PAY FOR?

Where, indeed, is the beef? Somebody, presumably one or more of our elected representatives, should be telling us what exactly it is they are trying to enact, even if it changes day to day. How about a running chronicle of amendments and deletions, including who was responsible? How about a clear statement from somebody about the Features, Advantages and Benefits of the proposed bill?

We need a managed communication strategy to confront that Billion-dollar Megaphone being powered by the opponents of change. Whatever happens on the progressive side of the argument is disjointed and uncoordinated. This is a job that could be managed by a person like yourself, with extensive experience in managed communications.

This is really urgent, and we run the very real risk of simply being out-shouted by the other side.

CW+++

The debate about referring to insurers as "insurance companies", or part of the "health care industry", can be solved by simply calling them "the Parasitic Insurance Protection Racket".

[ This next part was sent, accidentally, as comment to the Bill Moyers story also about Wendell Potter. It belongs as comment here.]

Saying that insurers use the same tactics as "tobacco" firms is a shade off-target.
Top for-profit insurers ARE the cigarette industry in that they own billions of dollars of holdings in top cigarette manufacturers...and, for good measure, in manufacturers of tobacco pesticides. Google up "PNHP NEJM insurance tobacco" for info.
This goes far to explain why such insurers use the cigarette makers' own deceptive name for themselves---"Tobacco Companies"...as if they just provide some traditionally-used natural plant product.
Such insurers, and complicit chemical firms involved with the pesticides and chlorine contamination of typical cigarettes, and their allies in government and media, are understandably loath to call cigarette makers "the Pesticide-Contaminated, Chlorine-contaminated, Dioxin-delivering, Radiation-delivering Cigarette Industry". (Rads come from certain fertilizers.) To do so would be a long-overdue disaster for the insurers and the chemical and fertilizer cartels. If Wendell Potter touched on this scandalous angle, Big Insurance may well have already been packing its bags...making way for Single Payer.

Dear Mr. Potter,
Thank you so much for coming forth. The lack of health care has been ruling our decisions in my family for the past 9 years. We even quit our jobs and my husband went back to school ,at the age of 50, to get a masters in math. He just finished and now the job market is crazy. Oh well.
We need people like you in America. We work hard at being advocates for health care( DNC, Health Care reform groups, etc.) but the government doesn't listen. Americans are so busy trying to survive day to day that action isn't taken. I have sent your PBS interview to every one I know. It made a difference. Again thank you for what you have done. It took courage and conviction.
Sincerely,
Tina Campbell - North Carolina

I've run into a talking point from friends that I'd like to find out the truth on.

They like to say, "Countries with public health care -- such as Canada, England and some countries in southeast Asia -- are trying to get rid of their public systems because it doesn't work."

This seems counter to the interviews with citizens of those countries who say their health care system is fine. Is this a blatant lie, or are they twisting the results of some bogus poll?

Please read this article: “The Health Care Chamber of Horrors: Choose Your Bureaucrat!”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-fisher/the-health-care-chamber-o_b_219564.html

Quoted from the article:

"Well, government is not the only place where bureaucrats work. They are ubiquitous in those wonderful companies we pay to bring us our health insurance policies. . . .

"Consider this mini-chamber of horrors, culled from a recent and highly dramatic House hearing chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman of California.

Robin Beaton, 59, found out last June she had an aggressive form of breast cancer and needed surgery -- immediately. But just days before her double mastectomy, she found out that her insurance provider would not cover the procedure. (In the industry, they call it "rescission.") . . .

"And Peggy Raddatz testified on behalf of her late brother, who was diagnosed with stage four non-Hodgkin's type lymphoma. In the midst of his chemotherapy treatment, his coverage was cancelled and he was not able to receive the stem cell transplant needed to save his life. . . .

"These are but a few of the thousands of people who thought their premiums entitled them to be treated. And if you think these are extraordinary cases, consider this:

"BLUE CROSS OF CALIFORNIA, A SUBSIDIARY OF WELLPOINT, ENCOURAGED EMPLOYEES THROUGH PERFORMANCE EVALUATIONS TO CANCEL THE HEALTH INSURANCE POLICIES OF INDIVIDUALS WITH EXPENSIVE ILLNESSES. . One Blue Cross employee earned a perfect score of "5" for "exceptional performance" on an evaluation that noted the employee's role in dropping thousands of policyholders and avoiding nearly $10 million worth of medical care.

"Blue Cross of California and two other insurers saved more than $300 million in medical claims by canceling more than 20,000 sick policyholders over a five-year period.

Only a single-payer approach to healthcare reform will end the inhumanity of our failed healthcare insurance system, where profits are more important than patients’ health, and where people die because of it.