AlterNet: Exposing the Insurance Industry's Vast Conspiracy to Smear Michael Moore

[marmar]

It is the summer of 2006; Filmmaker Michael Moore is putting the finishing touches on his latest film, Sicko, a documentary that purports to take on the health care system in the United States. Coming on the heels of the critical and box office successes of Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11, the highest grossing documentary in history, Moore is hot, Hollywood hot. People's Choice Awards hot -- in January of 2005, at the 31st Annual People's Choice Awards, Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, receives the "Favorite Movie" award. Titans in the insurance and pharmaceutical industries have every reason to be concerned.

No one, other than Moore and his crew know what's in Sicko, although it appears that health care industry operatives are doing all they can to sniff out the details. Variety reported that when plans for the making of Sicko became public, several large drug companies "mounted plans to combat the doc, including circulating memos to employees warning them not to cooperate with Moore." The memos instructed their employees to be on the lookout for "a scruffy guy in a baseball cap" going around asking too many questions. PhRMA (Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America), which represents the country's leading pharmaceutical research and biotechnology companies, had not yet issued any public statements regarding the film.

Fast forward four-plus years: In a recent appearance promoting his news book Deadly Spin, on MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," Wendell Potter, a former vice president of corporate communications at CIGNA -- one of the United States' largest health insurance companies -- and now a fellow at the Center for Media and Democracy, a corporate watchdog group, talked about how America's health care industry worked feverishly to defeat President Barack Obama's health care reform initiatives.

During the course of the interview, Potter mentioned the insurance industry's plan to discredit Michael Moore prior to the release of Sicko. "We ran a story in our online newspaper saying Moore is embarking on a documentary -- and if you see a scruffy guy in a baseball cap, you'll know who it is," Stephen Lederer, a spokesman for Pfizer Global Research and Development, told the Los Angeles Times at the time. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/news/148950/exposing_the_insurance_industry%27s_vast_conspiracy_to_smear_michael_moore/

[OHdem10]

1. Insurance Companies Greatest Fear : "Sicko" would spark

a Movement. Ha, Ha, they do not know Democrats. They
just take what is handed out and complain.