The Rise And Fall Of Obamacare: Will The Inside Story Ever Be Told?
EDUCATE! HEALTH CARE, OBAMACARE
By John Stauber, www.counterpunch.org
December 8th, 2016
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Above Photo: by Marc Nozell | CC BY 2.0
My friend and former colleague Wendell Potter, the CIGNA insurance public
relations chief who saw the evil of his ways and left his job, is starting a
new non-profit journalism enterprise called Tarbell.
The investigative story I want to see from Wendell is one I am sure he will
never tell: an insider exposé of the ugly rise and fall of Obamacare. This
is a story Wendell knows inside and out, but I doubt he will ever really
come to grips with its truth: Obamacare was a pro-industry Democrat scam
that destroyed an opportunity for single payer education and reform and
ultimately brought devastating political ruin to the Democrats themselves.
I welcomed Wendell Potter to the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) staff
in May, 2009, just before I retired from CMD as its Founder and Executive
Director. Wendell arrived with a $100,000 grant in hand from TIDES
Foundation to support his work as an insurance industry insider turned NGO
reform activist and whistle blower. He testified before Congress, was
featured by Bill Moyers Journal, and became a popular and admired public
face of the liberal health reform movement in America.
Before I brought Wendell into CMD, he assured me that he was committed to
single payer, but that turned out to be false. Instead, Wendell promoted
Obamacare, a sop to the drug and insurance industry which helped the
Democrats keep single payer off the table, effectively killing real health
care reform in America.
I estimate that TIDES and other liberal foundations, individual donors,
unions and corporations dumped over $100 million into the Democrats
well-oiled NGO lobby and PR effort to pass Obamacare. Much of this money
moved through or was coordinated by a rich but short-lived lobby group
called Health Care for America Now. HCANs scores of members included US
Action, MoveOn, SEIU, AFSCME, and the usual liberal laundry list of
Democrat-aligned NGO organizations. Wendell participated intimately in its
PR and lobbying and knows its story well from the inside. That is what I
would pay Tarbell to tell, because it is a story that America needs to hear,
now that Obamacare is being destroyed by its own contradictions,
corruptions, and the rise of Trump.
I told Wendell in the Fall of 2009 that Obamacare, nothing but a recycled
Heritage Foundation scheme, was a guaranteed failure, that it completely
undermined single payer reform, and that it would certainly blow up in the
face of the Democrats. He responded that as long as the so-called Public
Option was part of it, it was worth supporting. But the Public Option was
stripped out by Obama and the Democrats, and then the rationale of the
Democrats progressives in the HCAN lobby became we must still support
Obamacare and our President because not to do so would embarrass him and his
key legislative proposal.
Today it is clear that Obamacare has become a very bad movie, one rich with
dark irony as we are now to witness its horror film ending: evisceration and
decapitation by the Trump-led Republicans. (Vincent Price should rise from
the dead to narrate this one!) Consider this: it was Obamacare alone that
fueled the rise of the GOPs Tea Party movement and led directly to the
Democrats Congressional defeat in 2010. It was then the failures and
shortcomings of Obamacare, a political WMD in the hands of the political
Right, that set the stage for the rise of Trump and his ascendancy to
President.
That, in synopsis, is the true, tragic tale of Obamacare. Wendell Potter
witnessed and participated in this from the inside, and his insider story
could blow the whistle on the Democrats and their NGO lobby, something that
America needs to hear and understand. The rise and fall of Obamacare is a
crucial tale to understand how to bring about single payer in the future
and, just as important, how the Democrats are adept at coopting and
derailing such fundamental reform to serve industry and their own corrupt
political agenda.
Unfortunately I dont expect Wendell Potter and Tarbell to ever blow the
whistle on Obamacare. Hey, Wendell, surprise me!
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The Rise And Fall Of Obamacare: Will The Inside Story Ever Be Told?
Educate! Health Care, Obamacare
By John Stauber, www.counterpunch.org
December 8th, 2016
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Above Photo: by Marc Nozell | CC BY 2.0
My friend and former colleague Wendell Potter, the CIGNA insurance public
relations chief who saw the evil of his ways and left his job, is starting a
new non-profit journalism enterprise called Tarbell.
The investigative story I want to see from Wendell is one I am sure he will
never tell: an insider exposé of the ugly rise and fall of Obamacare. This
is a story Wendell knows inside and out, but I doubt he will ever really
come to grips with its truth: Obamacare was a pro-industry Democrat scam
that destroyed an opportunity for single payer education and reform and
ultimately brought devastating political ruin to the Democrats themselves.
I welcomed Wendell Potter to the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) staff
in May, 2009, just before I retired from CMD as its Founder and Executive
Director. Wendell arrived with a $100,000 grant in hand from TIDES
Foundation to support his work as an insurance industry insider turned NGO
reform activist and whistle blower. He testified before Congress, was
featured by Bill Moyers Journal, and became a popular and admired public
face of the liberal health reform movement in America.
Before I brought Wendell into CMD, he assured me that he was committed to
single payer, but that turned out to be false. Instead, Wendell promoted
Obamacare, a sop to the drug and insurance industry which helped the
Democrats keep single payer off the table, effectively killing real health
care reform in America.
I estimate that TIDES and other liberal foundations, individual donors,
unions and corporations dumped over $100 million into the Democrats
well-oiled NGO lobby and PR effort to pass Obamacare. Much of this money
moved through or was coordinated by a rich but short-lived lobby group
called Health Care for America Now. HCANs scores of members included US
Action, MoveOn, SEIU, AFSCME, and the usual liberal laundry list of
Democrat-aligned NGO organizations. Wendell participated intimately in its
PR and lobbying and knows its story well from the inside. That is what I
would pay Tarbell to tell, because it is a story that America needs to hear,
now that Obamacare is being destroyed by its own contradictions,
corruptions, and the rise of Trump.
I told Wendell in the Fall of 2009 that Obamacare, nothing but a recycled
Heritage Foundation scheme, was a guaranteed failure, that it completely
undermined single payer reform, and that it would certainly blow up in the
face of the Democrats. He responded that as long as the so-called Public
Option was part of it, it was worth supporting. But the Public Option was
stripped out by Obama and the Democrats, and then the rationale of the
Democrats progressives in the HCAN lobby became we must still support
Obamacare and our President because not to do so would embarrass him and his
key legislative proposal.
Today it is clear that Obamacare has become a very bad movie, one rich with
dark irony as we are now to witness its horror film ending: evisceration and
decapitation by the Trump-led Republicans. (Vincent Price should rise from
the dead to narrate this one!) Consider this: it was Obamacare alone that
fueled the rise of the GOPs Tea Party movement and led directly to the
Democrats Congressional defeat in 2010. It was then the failures and
shortcomings of Obamacare, a political WMD in the hands of the political
Right, that set the stage for the rise of Trump and his ascendancy to
President.
That, in synopsis, is the true, tragic tale of Obamacare. Wendell Potter
witnessed and participated in this from the inside, and his insider story
could blow the whistle on the Democrats and their NGO lobby, something that
America needs to hear and understand. The rise and fall of Obamacare is a
crucial tale to understand how to bring about single payer in the future
and, just as important, how the Democrats are adept at coopting and
derailing such fundamental reform to serve industry and their own corrupt
political agenda.
Unfortunately I dont expect Wendell Potter and Tarbell to ever blow the
whistle on Obamacare. Hey, Wendell, surprise me!
