To Know the Disease

[BeckyDem]

Wendell Potter, a former health care executive, reveals the unified corporate effort against Medicare for All—and how those talking points are echoed by candidates and debate moderators

By Andrew Cockburn

December 10, 2019

For the third time in thirty years, we are in the midst of a debate over the American health care system, this time against the backdrop of the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination race. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders stand alone among the candidates in pledging to introduce Medicare for All while abolishing private health insurance, whereas other leading candidates, notably Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg, vehemently attack that plan.

Given the well-attested fact that we pay more than any other developed nation for a system that offers poor care and bankruptcy for millions of Americans, it may seem surprising that arguments against reform find fertile ground, including among ambitious politicians. So it must be understood that the attacks on reform are part of a carefully crafted campaign deployed by an immensely wealthy corporate coalition determined to preserve its profit flow. Key to this campaign are the public relations professionals, skilled at manipulating opinion on behalf of their clients in ways few outsiders perceive or understand. Wendell Potter was one of them. Rising to head of corporate communications for the $70 billion health insurance giant Cigna, he was a field commander in the battle to protect industry profits, including the crushing of Hillary Clinton’s reform initiative. But there came a day when, as he wrote in his best-selling memoir, Deadly Spin, “it finally dawned on me that, in my own quest for money and prestige, I had sold my soul,” leading him to walk away from his powerful and lucrative position. As a rare high-level defector, he provides illuminating, vital insights into the ways of his former employers and their amen chorus in the current political arena.

Do you find the themes in the current debate over Medicare for All familiar from previous battles over health care reform?

I absolutely find them familiar. I see the hand of my old employer, my old industry, trying to shape the way people think about health care reform, and to shape the debate. They’re using largely the same themes, the same talking points, and the same general strategy. They have new tools, or at least new ways of communicating. One thing that’s a bit different this time is how they’re using social media, which in years past wasn’t available. They’re using Facebook and other platforms to try to persuade people that Medicare for All is not good policy. That’s really the only difference here.

https://harpers.org/blog/2019/12/to-know-the-disease-wendell-potter-interview/

[guillaumeb]

1. Recommended.

Even here, we regularly read warnings about how Medicare, a system the US is very familiar with, would never work if it were expanded.

No proof exists, of course, for this prediction. But it is regularly made even on a liberal site.

Or we are warned that single payer, which actually works better and is much cheaper than the US system of profit oriented medicine, could never work here, and that we must stay with the current, massively dysfunctional system.

Or we are warned that single payer, which is cheaper, would automatically be far more expensive here. Again, no real evidence, other than that industry will spend massively to defend the source of their profits.

[BeckyDem]

2. Yes, frequently. I find it disturbing.

[Uncle Joe]

3. That was an excellent read.

Thanks for the thread BeckyDem.

[BeckyDem]

6. Hard truths are essential in getting M4A passed.

I do appreciate Potter a great deal and you are very welcome.

[appalachiablue]

4. Thanks for posting and the input from Wendell Potter over the years

is so valuable to the honesty of this discussion.

[BeckyDem]

5. He does lay it all out exceptionally well. It can be uncomfortable for some to learn but

impossible to deny, imo.