Are We Going to Let Health Industry Propaganda Derail Obama's Plans for Reform?

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted May 21, 2009.

Editor's note: Click here to help fight Blue Cross and Blue Shield's deceptive campaign to undermine real health care reform!

The health industry is preparing to launch a lie-packed propaganda campaign in an attempt to rip the heart out of President Barack Obama’s plans for an overhaul of our health care system.  

Reports of the campaign come just a week after the health care lobby joined with SEIU to make a weak, unenforceable "commitment" to reduce the spiraling rate of health care costs to "only" 50 percent above the average growth rate of the economy overall. 

Big Health said it wanted to be a proactive partner with a "seat at the table"; it’s remarkable how quickly it has shown that its true intent was to derail any serious attempt at reform from a cozy place on the inside of the process.  

Only three days after Obama hailed the health lobbyists’ proposal as a breakthrough in the battle for reform, Big Health was already backing away from its vague and noncommittal "commitment."

According to the New York Times, "Hospitals and insurance companies said … that President Obama had substantially overstated their promise earlier this week to reduce the growth of health spending." Richard Pollack, the executive vice president of the American Hospital Association, one of the industry groups that made the proposal, stated definitively that Big Health "did not support reducing the rate of health spending by 1.5 percentage points annually" as had been widely reported. 

And now we can look forward to a reprise of the infamously dishonest "Harry and Louise" PR campaign that derailed Bill Clinton’s attempt to get the bloated rip-off we call a health care system under control, courtesy of one of the biggest players in the insurance business.

The Washington Post reports that Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina -- the state’s largest insurer, handling almost $11 billion in claims last year -- is preparing a series of ads invoking the bogeyman of a government-run health system in which faceless bureaucrats make health care decisions, people with pre-existing conditions are denied care, and Americans are left to die waiting for urgently needed procedures.  

The reality is that the ability to choose your own insurance and see whatever doctor you like is at the heart of Obama’s proposed reforms. What’s more, it’s the private insurers that need to cherry-pick healthier people and deny coverage to those with pre-existing conditions in order to turn a profit.

In fact, in 2005 the state of North Carolina forced BCBS (among other insurers) to pay millions for claims it had wrongly rejected. And the watchdog group Media Matters quoted a report from the Charlotte Observer that noted: "Consumer advocates argue that insurers use vague contract language as grounds to deny payment and save themselves money." 

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Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet.

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