(This is the latest in a series as part of Brave New Films' Sick For Profit campaign. Follow us on Facebook.)
This week, the insurance industry let a bit of their guard down, as they ramped up their efforts to attack anything meaningful in health care reform. As the Los Angeles Times reported that negotiations in the Senate Finance Committee were turning the bill into a "bonanza" for insurers, the industry tried to cement those gains by using fake grassroots tactics to portray an imagined outcry against real reforms like the public option.
UnitedHealth Group, subject of a scathing profile by Keith Olbermann this week, admitted it was turning its employees into lobbyists by distributing anti-public option talking points to them, and encouraging them to engage in anti-reform protests.
The New York Times published a very nice press release from the desk of Humana, one of the nation's largest health insurance companies. The reporter interviewed a bunch of employees at Humana, all of whom were horrified to see themselves depicted as "villains" in the health care debate. I agree with Yves Smith, this is an absurd angle for a story, an extreme example of selection bias. The people who work at Humana probably have a sense that their employer, um, pays their salary, and thusly, what's good for the employer is probably good for them. Similarly, most people hold a favorable opinion of themselves just as a matter of getting through the day. Not to mention the fact that their understanding of the functioning of Humana is limited to their job description. It is not possible to gain much of a perspective on the health care debate or industry practices by asking a midlevel manager "Do you think you're the worst person alive?"
Despite all of these industry efforts, we're starting to see a turning of the tide in the ground war over health care reform, regardless of how the punditocracy views it. Pro-reform individuals are making their personal stories known, such as in the powerful video where Rep. Tom Coburn tells a weeping woman whose insurance company cut off care for her husband's traumatic brain injury that she should just have her neighbors help her out:
Word is getting out about the intolerable cruelty of the current broken system. And Democratic leaders in Congress are actually starting to flex their muscles on this. Henry Waxman's investigation into insurance company salaries and perks - supplemented this week by parallel probes from Jay Rockefeller and Dennis Kucinich - have the chance of being consequential.
The connection between the astroturfing campaigns, which industry is paying millions to lobbyists to conduct, and industry profits is obvious. Those campaigns to weaken the health care reform bill are being carried off using customer premiums.
The results of the Rockefeller and Waxman probes are due right when the House and Senate return from recess. If used skillfully, these reports can weave a narrative - whether industry participates in them or not - of insurance company excess at a time when the system is broken and millions have been denied coverage. And despite the AHIP mouthpiece's claims, this "shifts the debate" to where it ought to be - not on mythical stories and smears about reform, but about the fundamental choice between filling the pockets of an already bloated insurance industry or providing for the general welfare of all Americans.
Finally, just for giggles, check out this dead-on parody:
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