Jeff Cohen 1993: Clintons vs. Insurance Industry: A Media Myth

[Flabbergasted]

Buoyed by NAFTA's victory, the White House will now concentrate on its other major policy initiative -- health care reform. We can expect mainstream news outlets to paint a picture of Bill and Hillary Clinton in mortal battle against the big bad insurance industry.

It's a vivid picture, but it distorts reality. As in the NAFTA battle, big corporations are in the president's corner.

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A full-blown media myth was born, with most reports omitting basic facts:

** The Health Insurance Association of America, which opposes the Clinton plan and produced the Harry and Louise ads, represents small to medium-size insurance companies. They would lose out to bigger firms under the administration's "managed competition" plan.

** The "Big Five" of health insurers-Aetna, Cigna, Metropolitan Life, Prudential and Travelers-have formed the Alliance for Managed Competition, which is sympathetic to the Clinton plan. That's because those firms, heavily invested in Health Maintenance Organizations, would be enriched by it.

** Operating through the Jackson Hole study group, the insurance giants helped draw up the managed competition blueprint, later adopted by the Clinton administration. Contrary to the Democratic Party ads, the Clinton plan was designed for -- and by -- big insurance interests. In a 1992 article in Health Economics magazine, Jackson Hole leaders bluntly argued that managed competition is the only way to avert a government takeover of "health care financing" and the "elimination of a multiple-payer private insurance industry."

What the Jackson Hole group feared was a Canadian-style system in which the government (the "single-payer") controls costs while paying all hospital and doctor bills. Single-payer rids health care of private insurance companies-along with costly bureaucracy, profiteering and wasteful advertising.

Despite the fact that a single-payer proposal has been endorsed by 95 members of Congress-plus groups like Consumers Union and Public Citizen -- most major media have pushed it to the margins. A recent computer search found only one mention of the single-payer proposal on ABC's World News Tonight in all of 1993.

When media do mention a Canadian-style system, it's often dismissed as 'politically unrealistic." Yet according to General Accounting Office and Congressional Budget Office studies, only single-payer has a realistic chance of extending universal coverage without raising costs -- the goal politicians claim to be seeking.

http://www.jeffcohen.org/docs/mbeat19931124.html

[Cerridwen]

1. PBS has a timeline up about this issue

It gives a slightly different view for those who'd like to read both sides of the story. Below are a couple of excerpts of this 3 page document I hope people will take the time to read. The issue and how it was addressed, attacked and twisted is an abject lesson in how "politics of power" work.

Spring 1991 - Minority Whip Newt Gingrich, in a private discussion about long-term Republican political strategy, predicts that the "next great offensive of the Left," as he puts it, will be "socializing health care." Gingrich declares the need for hardline Republicans to begin positioning themselves now to keep Democrats from winning in the future.

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August 30, 1992 - Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller gets wind of Clinton's waning support for "pay-or-play" and fires off a memo arguing against any change of direction. He also tells Clinton that his statement that "Americans deserve or have a right to health care" might present problems for the candidate in the future. "Although many Americans may initially react positively to this statement," he writes, “over time it can make them uneasy. Before long they will be asking: How would we pay for all that care for all those people? Won't it require a huge new government bureaucracy?"

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<Page 2>

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November 1, 1993 - Hillary Clinton launches a scathing attack against the insurance industry to counter the highly damaging "Harry and Louise" ads. She accuses the industry of greed and deliberately lying about the reform plan in order to protect its profits. She specifically denounces the ads' claim that the Clinton plan "limits choice." Rarely, if ever, has a First Lady publicly attacked any American industry or industry group -- and certainly never in such strong language and in such a furious manner. Her assault makes front-page newspaper stories, network TV news shows, and calls more attention to HIAA's role and message.

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December 2, 1993 - Leading conservative operative William Kristol privately circulates a strategy document to Republicans in Congress. Kristol writes that congressional Republicans should work to "kill" -- not amend -- the Clinton plan because it presents a real danger to the Republican future: Its passage will give the Democrats a lock on the crucial middle-class vote and revive the reputation of the party. Nearly a full year before Republicans will unite behind the "Contract With America," Kristol has provided the rationale and the steel for them to achieve their aims of winning control of Congress and becoming America's majority party. Killing health care will serve both ends. The timing of the memo dovetails with a growing private consensus among Republicans that all-out opposition to the Clinton plan is in their best political interest. Until the memo surfaces, most opponents prefer behind-the-scenes warfare largely shielded from public view. The boldness of Kristol's strategy signals a new turn in the battle. Not only is it politically acceptable to criticize the Clinton plan on policy grounds, it is also politically advantageous. By the end of 1993, blocking reform poses little risk as the public becomes increasingly fearful of what it has heard about the Clinton plan.

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