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

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

What gives the health lobby night sweats is a proposal to add a publicly run insurance plan open to everyone who wants in to our current mix of employer-based insurance, Medicare and Medicaid. The lobbyists' argument against it is perfectly contradictory: They say that a public insurance option would, A) be a disaster for patients and doctors, and B) they could never hope to compete with it.

A spokesman for Blue Cross told reporters, "We believe an unchecked government-run plan would lower payment to doctors and hospitals, forcing them to attempt to charge private insurers more and thus further eliminate private insurers' ability to compete against the government."  

There’s no small amount of irony in that claim -- it was BCBG of North Carolina that in 2007 lost a $128 million class-action suit for fraudulently underpaying physicians. According to the Durham Herald Sun, "Numerous state medical societies, including the N.C. Medical Society, were involved in the lawsuit, which charged that North Carolina Blue Cross and other Blues plans harmed doctors with unfair business practices that denied and delayed payments for medical care. ... The complaint identified numerous Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans as defendants in an alleged scheme to defraud doctors in violation of the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act." 

That’s the insurance industry that’s offering to "fix" American health care while trying to kill any possibility of substantial reform -- racketeers.  

Last week I wrote, "No One’s Falling for Big Health’s Bogus Promise to 'Reform.' " It wasn’t an entirely accurate headline; by and large the commercial media, the Obama administration and many members of Congress believed it was in fact a significant step on the road to better health care. But now Big Health is showing itself to be a Trojan horse fighting for the status quo rather than a partner for reform.

So it’s time to pull that seat at the table out from under them. And you can help do exactly that.

Health Care for America Now, a coalition of organizations fighting for the public insurance option, has a variety of tools to make it easy for your voice to be heard. You can sign up for alerts, send a letter to your representatives or get involved with local actions here.

And MoveOn.org promises to "run ads, hold events and work like crazy to get the real truth out to voters." It will also "keep the pressure on Congress to make sure they don’t get bullied into gutting the president’s plan to guarantee health care coverage for everyone."

See more stories tagged with: health, moveon, health care, lobbyists, barack obama, health industry, hcan

Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »