“One million, four hundred thousand dollars a day,” said my friend Dick, as we stood on the sidewalk in front of New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman’s Santa Fe office. “A day.” That’s the amount, according to a July 6 story in the Washington Post, the for-profit health-care industry is spending to quash any congressional action that would allow citizens to sign up for a public health-care system, let alone a single-payer option along the lines of Medicare. Finding a congressional Democrat brave enough to stand up to such a full-court press is difficult enough. The Republicans, being the party of big money, are by definition a lost cause.
About 75 of us common citizens were gathered on a Thursday afternoon to publicly urge Sen. Bingaman to faithfully represent the majority of his constituents (polls now show around two-thirds of Americans favor at least a public option). Although the senator had hinted in a carefully worded column that he supports the proposal, nobody in our little group of activists had been able to pin him down on his commitment.
We do know, thanks to analysis of filing records by the Center for Responsive Politics, that Sen. Bingaman has during his career accepted campaign funding as follows: $547,616 from “health professionals,” $160,875 from the insurance sector and $144,498 from the pharmaceutical and health product industries. This is not to suggest the senator is an extraordinarily heavy feeder at the trough of corporate largesse. Like other members of Congress, he merely plays by the rules endorsed by the Supreme Court, which has long supported the concepts that corporations possess human rights, and money is due the right of free speech.
So what does the big money have to say about health care in the U.S.A.? The July 10 broadcast of the Public Broadcasting Service series Bill Moyers Journal provided an unprecedented wealth of information, including what options are being considered in Washington and what roles politics and money are playing in the debate. The investigative journalism that went into Mr. Moyers’s program is an example of why the largest corporations (of any sector) and their representatives in Congress just hate public broadcasting.
Included was an interview with Wendell Potter, former head of public relations for CIGNA, one of this country’s largest insurance companies. It’s troubling how slowly these industry insiders often take to come clean, but as Potter says: “I was insulated. I didn’t really see what was going on.” But after seeing a “health expedition” in Wise, Va., during a visit with his parents, something snapped inside Potter.
“I just assumed that it would be … booths set up and people just getting their blood pressure checked and things like that. But what I saw were doctors who were set up to provide care in animal stalls.”
On June 24, Potter testified before the Senate. His testimony reveals insurance companies’ constant need to satisfy Wall Street players. “The top priority of for-profit companies is to drive up the value of their stock. … To win the favor of powerful analysts, for-profit insurers must prove that they made more money during the previous quarter than a year earlier and that the portion of the premium going to medical costs is falling.”
If you missed the television broadcast, you can still access the program at pbs.org/moyers. In fact, the Web site supplies a more complete picture of how the corporate health-care establishment is pulling out all the stops to shape “reform” in a way, as Wendell Potter says, “that benefits Wall Street far more than average Americans.” There are sources for tracking where each member of Congress gets her/his campaign funds, as well as timelines of specific issues showing where and when big contributions came into play. There are even “captured” documents, written by industry PR types, outlining the industry’s secretive strategy to publicly smear the image of publicly provided health care. “Meetings will be held in person, when possible, or via secure conference call lines and password-protected online meetings … highlight horror stories of government-run systems.”
Unlike citizens in other developed countries, we have been conditioned by decades of the status quo into accepting the validity of providing health care for a profit. Now, as Americans begin to realize they’ve been duped, we need to arm ourselves and each other against the propaganda being spread by the industry even as we demand our legislators stand up for our interests.
The health-care industry is trying to actualize the phrase “best democracy money can buy” with its $1.4-million-a-day campaign. Rubbing shoulders with others determined to achieve something better is an encouraging experience. I recommend you try it.
Dave Wheelock, davewheelock@yahoo.com, is a member of the Oneida Nation. He is a collegiate sports administrator and coach with a history degree from the University of New Mexico. Mr. Wheelock’s views do not necessarily represent those of the Mountain Mail.
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