Bill Moyers: How Can We Expect an Industry That Profits from Disease and Sickness to Police Itself?

By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, AlterNet. Posted May 24, 2009.

As the drug and insurance companies, hospitals and doctors dumped the mangled carcass of reform into the Potomac, securely encased in concrete, once again they said don’t worry; they would cut costs voluntarily.

If you believed that, we’ve got a toll-free bridge to the Mayo Clinic we’d like to sell you.

So anyone with any memory left could be excused for raising their eyebrows at the health care industry’s latest promises. As if on cue, hardly had their pledge of volunteerism rung out across the land than Jay Gellert, chief executive of Health Net Inc. and chair of the lobbying group America’s Health Insurance Plans, assured his pals not to worry abut the voluntary reductions. “We believe that we can do it without undermining the viability of companies,” he said, “and in effect enhancing the payment to physicians and hospitals.” In other words, their so-called voluntary “reforms” will in no way interfere with maximizing profits.

Also last week, John Lechleiter, the chief executive of drug giant Eli Lilly, blasted universal health care in a speech before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce: “I do not believe that policymakers have yet arrived at a full and complete diagnosis of what’s wrong and what’s right with U.S. health care,” he declared. “And I am very concerned that some of the proposed policies—the treatments, to continue my metaphor—will have unintended side-effects that make our situation worse.”

So why bother with the charm offensive on Pennsylvania Avenue? Could it be, as some critics suggest, a Trojan horse, getting the health industry a place at the table so they can leap up at the right moment and again knife to death any real reform?

Wheelers and dealers from the health sector aren’t waiting for that moment. According to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, they’ve spent more than $134 million on lobbying in the first quarter of 2009 alone. And some already are shelling out big bucks for a publicity blitz and ads attacking any health care reform that threatens to reduce the profits from sickness and disease.

The Washington Post’s health care reform blog reported Tuesday that Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina has hired an outside PR firm to put together a video campaign assaulting Obama’s public plan. And this month alone, the group Conservatives for Patients’ Rights is spending more than a million dollars for attack ads. They’ve hired a public relations firm called CRC – Creative Response Concepts. You remember them – the same high-minded folks who brought you the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the gang who savaged John Kerry’s service record in Vietnam.

The ads feature the chairman of Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, Rick Scott. Who’s he? As a former deputy inspector general from the Department of Health and Human Services told The New York Times, “He hopes people don’t Google his name.”

Scott’s not a doctor; he just acts like one on TV. He’s an entrepreneur who took two hospitals in Texas and built them into the largest health care chain in the world, Columbia/HCA. In 1997, he was fired by the board of directors after Columbia/HCA was caught in a scheme that ripped off the Feds and state governments for hundreds of millions of dollars in bogus Medicare and Medicaid payments, the largest such fraud in history. The company had to cough up $1.7 billion dollars to get out of the mess.

Rick Scott got off, you should excuse the expression, scot-free. Better than, in fact. According to published reports, he waltzed away with a $10 million severance deal and $300 million worth of stock. So much for voluntarily lowering overhead.

With medical costs rising six percent per year, that’s who’s offering himself as a spokesman for the health care industry. Speaking up for single payer is Geri Jenkins, a president of the California Nurses Association and National Nurses Organizing Committee – a registered nurse with literal hands-on experience.

“We're there around the clock,” she told our colleague Jessica Wang. “So we feel a real sense of obligation to advocate for the best interests of our patients and the public. Now, you can talk about policy but when you're staring at a human face it's a whole different story.”

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Michael Winship co-wrote this article. Bill Moyers is managing editor and Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday nights on PBS. Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers.

Research provided by editorial producer Rebecca Wharton.

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