A former insurance executive said that some opposition to President Obama’s healthcare overhaul blueprint has been generated by the private-payer industry, though he did not directly link current squabbles at town hall meetings to the insurance lobby itself.
Wendell Potter, a former vice president for Cigna, described a history of “duplicitous and well-financed PR campaigns” the insurance sector has waged whenever Congress attempts sweeping reform of the healthcare industry.
“Its current behind the scenes efforts may well shape reform in a way that benefits Wall Street more than it benefits average Americans,” he told reporters at a Capitol Hill news conference.
Potter said that he has been involved in such campaigns in the past, which were meant to “derail any reform” that might take away from insurance industry profits.
Potter, who
testified before a Senate panel last month on the topic, said groups such as the Health Leadership Council and the Health Benefits Coalition acted as front groups to scuttle first the early 1990s effort at reform and then the Patient’s Bill of Rights.
“The industry goes through great lengths to keep its involvement in these campaigns hidden from public view,” he said. “With this history, you can rest assured that the industry is up to the same dirty tricks; using the same devious PR practice it’s used for many years to kill reform this year.”
But America’s Health Insurance Plans, the main lobbying group for the insurance, has distanced itself from the current spate of protests that have been evident at a number of political town hall meetings.
“Like most Americans, health plan employees are constructive and civil participants in town hall meetings,” AHIP said in a statement. “There is no truth to the unfounded allegation that AHIP’s employee grassroots program is responsible for disruptive and inappropriate tactics at healthcare town hall meetings.”
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