I have never written about this before in any situation but after reading Wendell Potter’s book, “Deadly Spin,” I am compelled more than ever before to do my part to write on behalf of so many people who don’t have health care in the United States. What comes to light in what Potter reveals is “big government” is no match for the health insurance industry. People talk about the “big government” getting in between the patient and doctor. Well, the insurance companies can take “big government” to school on how to do it: Weed out more and more of the sickest ones.

Potter worked as a senior executive head of public relations for the Cigna insurance company. Stunned by what he witnessed in Wise County, Tenn., at the local fairgrounds, hundreds of people given triage health care by RAM, a volunteer organization whose initials stand for Remote Area Medical. The people treated in animal stalls. Potter realized the destructive role he played in dishing out misinformation to prevent any change to health care in the U.S.

In great detail he shows they are masters at manipulating public opinion, using every facet of media. Via the lobbyists they provide well-researched, emotionally charged talking points to congressmen, who merely parrot what they hear.

Profits drive the decision making in the insurance companies. How could it be anything else since they answer to their investors and not health care recipients? “The Wall Street Journal reported in 2004 that Aetna had spent more than $20 million to install new technology that enabled it ‘to identify and dump unprofitable corporate accounts’ (p. 74).” Hanway, CEO of Cigna, left in 2009 at age 57 with a $111 million retirement package. “From 2000 to 2008, the 10 largest for-profit health insurers paid their CEOs a total of $690.7 million … Compare this lavish executive compensation to that of the administrator of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, who manages the health care of 44 million elderly and disabled Americans on Medicare and about 59 million low-income and disable recipients on Medicaid. This administrator’s pay tops out at $176,000 a year (p. 141).”

Why do you suppose we hear over and over again how “big government” will destroy the health care system? Because as long as all the attention is focused on “big government,” no one will notice the dragon in the halls of Congress, the health insurance industry. The strategy, let’s get people mad at “big government” while raking in the profits, making investor’s happy; let’s use the government to manipulate government policy in favor of profits. This doesn’t sound like a free-market-driven health insurance industry to me.

As Potter notes, “In the future, it will not be ‘Obamacare’ that takes choice away from Americans, as the insurance industry and its allies contended during the recent debate. It will be the unfettered invisible hand of the marketplace (p. 146).”

This comes from a man who was at the very top executive level of Cigna insurance.

Joel B. Erickson

Albert Lea