Well, you're exactly right. When I left my job, I didn't know exactly what I was going to do. All I knew was that I didn't want to keep doing what I was doing. So I did a little bit of consulting work after I left. And it wasn't until President Obama had his health care summit at the White House in March that I really decided that I just can't stay on the sidelines, I need to speak out. The head of the big trade group for the insurance industry, Karen Ignagni, was at that summit and she was on television assuring the President that the insurance companies would be working cooperatively with him and with the Congress on reform this year and I knew that was disingenuous. I had been a part of efforts to plan PR campaigns and lobbying campaigns to shape reform to benefit health insurance companies and I knew that's what their motives really were. And they weren't interested in the best health care reform for Americans, but [were out] for themselves.
And then, a
little after that, I saw another executive of that same organization, America's
Health Insurance Plans [AHIP] being introduced by Chris Matthews on Hard Ball
on MSNBC and he was saying essentially the same thing. That this time, as he
put it, the insurance companies are coming to the table with solutions. And I
knew that was also disingenuous. The solutions they had in mind were solutions
that would work for the insurance industry more than they'd work for anybody
else.
And then I heard a congressman being interviewed from Tennessee, a Republican from Chattanooga, Zach Wamp. And he was being interviewed right after the summit. And he was using some of the same talking points that I had helped develop and that I'd heard other people use who were shills for the insurance industry. He was saying in response to a question about the number of people who don't have insurance in this country that half the people who don't have insurance don't have it by choice. They could buy it if they wanted to but they decided to go naked, as he put it. And I knew that had come from the insurance companies because that's what insurance executives say. "What problem? We don't have a big problem here. It's mainly that people just don't buy what they should buy to give themselves coverage, protection. That just really made me mad. I recognized that he was part of the efforts to work on behalf of the insurance industry to shape reform or kill it. and I decided to just start speaking out and telling people like it is.
Let's pause here. When we come back for the second installment of our interview, we will discuss "Sicko and how the industry was so worried about Moore's film that they sent a spy to Cannes for the world premiere and immediately had an overseas conference call to plan a counterattack. Please join us.
***
Remote Area Medical website, including 60 Minutes segment
Wendell's blog at Center for Media and Democracy
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
1
1
