Progressive Democrats of America: Health Insurance Companies ‘Deadly Spin’

Progressive Democrats of America: Health Insurance Companies ‘Deadly Spin’

They are worn words all too familiar to Americans who following the health care debate—“government takeover of health care,” “death panels,” “single payer system.” But who invented these buzz words is less known.

So says Wendell Potter, former health insurance company PR guru turned progressive hero, who says it all can be traced back to the health insurance industry in his tell-all book, Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans.

“He is the whistleblower on the health insurance companies,” said Nancy St. Germain, the co-chair of the Rhode Island chapter of Progressive Democrats of America. “He outlines in the book how PR and smear campaigns and media … were (used) to defeat the national health care plan.”

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Buzz words chosen to appeal to conservatives

Potter, the former communications director for CIGNA, told the Rhode Island group last night that many of the hot button words used to fight national health care reform were invented by health insurance companies—and distributed for mass consumption by an army of PR companies and other third parties.

“They are created so that they resonate with diehard conservatives. The language is very carefully chosen to appeal to people of a certain ideological spectrum of conservatism,” Potter told GoLocalProv. “They know that when you use a term like ‘the government takeover of health care’ that it will essentially appeal to those who are inclined to worry about small government—who think we should shrink it rather than expand it.”

Campaign against ‘Sicko’

He recalled industry meetings where companies discussed how to discredit Michael Moore’s 2007 documentary Sicko, which made the case for a single-payer health care system. “They were planning to disseminate misinformation about other systems or selective anecdotes about care in other countries just to scare people away from adopting a system other than the one we got,” Potter said.

He told the crowd of progressive Democrats—which gathered at Waterplace Restaurant in Providence—that it could learn from the insurance companies’ tactics, such as using third parties to spread and add credibility to its message. “You really need to understand how they play the game and take some pages from their playbook,” Potter said.

Single-payer movement ‘very much alive’

Speaking after Potter, the national director of the Progressive Democrats, Tim Carpenter, proclaimed that the goal of a national health care system was not dead—even though it didn’t make it into the health care reform bill that passed Congress this year. “The movement for single-payer health care is very much alive,” he declared, saying the fight is now taking place in several states.

David Segal, who ran unsuccessfully in the Democratic primary for Congress, also spoke briefly, saying that progressives could count on Governor-elect Lincoln Chafee to work with them. He described Chafee as an “ally” whom “we can organize with instead of organize against.”