Wonderland or Not

OC remin­ded me of this Bill Moyers/Wendall Powell inter­view I saw a cou­ple of weeks ago. Although OC’s inte­rest lies with the medi­cal cost ratio, and bla­ming the peo­ple who own the stock (you, maybe me), my inte­rest lies merely with brin­ging this to your atten­tion, in case you mis­sed it.

Wen­dall Powell, a for­mer longs­tan­ding top level exe­cu­tive at Cigna ver­ba­li­zes truths you might already expect. The inter­view con­tains infor­ma­tion some of us have heard before. We’ve heard this from peo­ple we know wor­king within the industry, within the spec­trum of poli­tics, or with peo­ple who have had to fight for cove­rage. This my friends is not bullshit. This is what has been hap­pe­ning, and will con­ti­nue to hap­pen to all you stu­pid peo­ple, being used as patsies, out there trying to dis­rupt town halls like drunk college frat boys dis­rupt poetry readings.

The health care industry is not oppo­sed to man­da­tory health care, they sup­port that, but they oppose govern­ment com­pe­ti­tion and regu­la­tion — now for­cing something called con­su­mer dri­ven health care, one of the worst rip-offs they’ve yet to come up with, and something that has them sit­ting pretty on a pile of pro­fits. The industry will do anything to bring down anything that threa­tens their pile of gold.

Powell, head of Cigna’s coor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions for years, a posi­tion at the top of the com­pany, took part in the industry’s disc­re­di­ting Michael Moore’s Movie Sicko, by tar­ge­ted attacks on Moore’s cre­di­bi­lity, and slam­ming him with the Holly­wood label. Why? Because the insu­rance industry fea­red the truth.

Powell admits now that SICKO “hit the nail on the head”. ”

The Michael Moore movie that I saw was full of truth.” … They mani­pu­late public opi­nion and the news media and they have built up these rela­tionships with all these poli­ti­cians through cam­paign contributions.”

Powell was also part of the effort to kill the Clin­ton plan. He see’s what’s hap­pe­ning now as the same tac­tic used in that era.

The industry doesn’t want to have any com­pe­ti­tor. In fact, over the course of the last few years, has been shrin­king the num­ber of com­pe­ti­tors through a lot of acqui­si­tions and mer­gers. So first of all, they don’t want any more com­pe­ti­tion period. They cer­tainly don’t want it from a govern­ment plan that might be ope­ra­ting more effi­ciently than they are. The Medi­care pro­gram that we have here is a government-run pro­gram that has admi­nis­tra­tive expen­ses that are like three per­cent or so.

I have a memo writ­ten by Frank Luntz. He’s the Repu­bli­can stra­te­gist who we dis­co­ve­red, in the spring, has writ­ten the script for oppo­nents of health care reform. “First,” he says, “you have to pre­tend to sup­port it. Then use phra­ses like, “govern­ment takeo­ver,” “dela­yed care is denied care,” “con­se­quen­ces of ratio­ning,” “bureauc­rats, not doc­tors presc­ri­bing medicine.”

And because my opi­nion, as dis­cus­sed here pre­viously, is that an unre­gu­la­ted insu­rance industry, one with no com­pe­ti­tion is unethical.…

Well, they are ideo­lo­gi­cally alig­ned with the industry. They want to believe that the free mar­ket sys­tem can and should work in this country, like it does in other indus­tries. So they don’t unders­tand from an insider’s pers­pec­tive like I have, what that actually means, and the con­se­quen­ces of that to Americans.They parrot those com­ments, without really rea­li­zing what the real situa­tion is.

The insu­rance industry is frigh­te­ned by govern­ment health care, Frigh­te­ned by com­pe­ti­tion. They know it could work and they don’t want com­pe­ti­tion. They don’t want anything that could dec­rease the pro­fits, espe­cially now that the new con­su­mer dri­ven pro­grams are brin­ging in record pro­fits for them and their stockhol­ders. They lobby, they resist regu­la­tion, they radi­ca­lize anyone who expo­ses them, and they threa­ten legis­la­tors who oppose them with the same treat­ment they gave Michael Moore.

The redux of the full video, which is around 50 minu­tes long. It can also be found in seg­ments on You Tube.

The com­pete transc­ript can be found here. I enthu­sias­ti­cally sug­gest rea­ding the interview.

A com­ments off FYI production.

peace