Insurance Industry Prepares Counteroffensive Against 'Sicko'

[and-justice-for-all]

"Meanwhile the New York Sun is reporting the insurance and pharmaceutical industries are readying a multifaceted counteroffensive against Michael Moore's new film Sicko. Several think tanks and front groups are being bankrolled to attack Moore's critique of the health care industry. According to the Sun, the groups involved in the campaign include the CATO Institute; the Manhattan Institute; the Galen Institute, Pacific Research Institute; the Heritage Foundation and FreedomWorks, which is run by Former House Republican Majority Leader Dick Armey."
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/26/1413247

The Wolves are loose, they will try and tear SiCKO apart as well as spilling lies all over the place about the US HealthCare system. They will probably through lies in about the single-payer system of other countries.

DO NOT BY THE BULLSHIT and TELL EVERYONE YOU KNOW TO IGNORE THE LIES!

[Cooley Hurd]

1. My company, which has for the last 14 years I've been employed by them...

...has always paid for our health insurance (really good insurance, too). However, because of two consecutive years in which our PPO raised our premiums by 34% each year (resulting in $1M hit for our company of 200 people), the company had no choice but to institute employee contribution to our insurance plans. My boss felt so bad about doing it that he gave us all a raise to compensate for it (for the first year, at least).

The health care industry is out of control.:grr:

[and-justice-for-all]

2. I have GIGNA

and it goes up every year. But it is still better then the contractors so-called insurance (AKA rape)

[Cooley Hurd]

3. 34% a year for the last two years is outrageous and indicative of an industry...

...WAY out of control.:grr:

[and-justice-for-all]

4. Its appalling to say the least. nt

[papau]

21. But there will be Anecdotal evidence of current system "good" that ins industry will push since

when the stats are against you, the technique to stall reform is to push Anecdotal evidence as proof that the stats are wrong - most folks do not understand stats - and give much too much credit to Anecdotal rebuts -

we love a good happy ending story - so expect these to come out of that hotbed of intellect "CATO".

[fasttense]

5. It has always been my contention that people should not make money off the sick and dying.

Doctors have done this for years. I know I've heard that our horrible medical system is not the doctors fault but I've seen very few doctors complaining about this horrible system. In fact, most doctors I talk to don't want a change to the current medical insurance system. Yet thousands of people are going belly up because of health care costs and millions can't afford the insurance. There has got to be a better way. Yet doctors are not leading the charge to fix this mess.

If the AMA came out in support of a national health care plan would it make a difference? I think it would.

[frogcycle]

7. my dr is highly critical of the system n/t

[papau]

16. A Doctors MD training can put them in Debt at graduation by $180,000 - perhaps forgiveness of those

debts is the first reform, followed by retroactive tuition and board reimbursement.

Then those MD will be able to lower their charges without going bankrupt.

Of course the 4 to 8 years after the 4 years of post graduate time spent in Medical School which are called intern and residency which currently pay in the high 30's and low 40's depending on which year of residency you are in, will all need to be retroactively reimbursed since current MD wages are a recapture of those years of being paid less than half of what you are worth in any other role.

As to "Yet doctors are not leading the charge to fix this mess." - that is false statement - they are leading the charge to fix this mess. This web site http://www.pnhp.org/ is, as the name says, Doctors trying to get the system changed to single payer universal health. The org and the website have been around for a decade - the doctors are leading. The AMA has a lot of doctors who are still in the repaying of school loans and recapture of lost wages phase and feel then can not afford to change the system, but there are a lot of doctors who while in the same situation are amazingly self sacrificing and wanting to help mankind even if it bankrupts them.

Your rant against doctors re our medical care payment system is misinformed.

[annabanana]

6. My email to CSpan:

Beware of this well funded propaganda campaign!

All these groups, the CATO Institute; the Manhattan Institute; the Galen Institute, Pacific Research Institute; the Heritage Foundation and FreedomWorks are currently being bankrolled by the insurance and pharmaceutical industries to cloud the issues and confuse the public about the information that has been exposed by Michael Moore’s movie “Sicko”.

I know that CSpan has fallen for this in the past and I hope that an insistence on the FACTS will guide your choices when lining up speakers for The Washington Journal and other shows in the immediate future.

I urge other DUers to do the same. I want them to KNOW that we have their number!

[e-mail]

[ikojo]

8. St Louis DUers....rally for universal healthcare on 6/29

Missourians for Single Payer Health Care Coalition announces the
premiere of SiCKO! Come join us in the movement to change our
country's health care system with H.R. 676. Bring signs, wear buttons
to the rally for single payer health care for all.

Friday June 29,
The Chase Park Plaza Cinema,
Kingshighway & Lindell:
Press conference & rally @ 10AM.
SiCKO film premiere @ 12 NOON.

Sponsored by: Missourians for Single Payer (MOSP); HealthCare Now;
Missouri Nurses
Association, Third District; Physicians for a National Health Program
(PNHP); National Nurses Organizing Committee (NNOC); National Medical
Association (NMA); Ethical Action Committee of the Ethical Society of
St. Louis, Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), St. Louis Chapter;
Older Women's League (OWL), West County Democrats (WCD), & Alliance for
Democracy, St. Louis Chapter

[annabanana]

9. This thread needs some rec's. . . The offensive can be neutralized

if everyone can see it coming!!

[Cerridwen]

18. Thank you for the reminder to recommend...done

and a kick.

With the state of our current health "care" system, I think Harry and Louise are going to have to work much harder this time.

[wakeme2008]

10. K&R :) nt

[PA Democrat]

11. So will the MSM stifle stories about the corrupt health insurance industry

in the hopes of getting the millions in ad revenues they will spend to try to salvage their reputations? Personally, I hope that Move On and other groups raise money to run counter-ads. I would willingly contribute. But the real question is whether the MSM would air THOSE ads.

[Vinca]

12. There's no way the insurance industry/big pharma can fight "Sicko."

People are suffering and dying and running a kazillion television ads won't change that.

[endarkenment]

15. Don't bet on that.

Their unlimited millions will be used to raise one false issue after another. The Bullshit Media System echo chamber will fall in line, dutifully acting as stenographers and playing the he said/she said game treating facts and data as equivalent to complete bullshit, and every 'annointed' presidential candidate, having staked out a HealthCo-friendly position, will regurgitate the message as well. We will see their trolls here as well, both the conscious and the unconscious variety, dutifully raising each false point in their disinformation campaign. By the time they are done many will be convinced that people like Moore are causing death and sickness and denying adequate medical care in order to advance their homosexual-atheist-socialist agenda.

[annabanana]

19. I wasn't talking about "television ads". I was talking about

the "news" programs lining up a roster of "health policy experts" who are member of the above mentioned think tanks.

They will be posing as neutral, independent voices and will be giving us all the "reasons" that a single payer system is bad and evil and would have millions of innocent sick Americans dying in waiting rooms of incompetent "state sponsored" doctor assistants. . . . and use scare words like "socialist" and "communist" to distract from the real good that this kind of an overhaul of our broken, craven system might do.

[madrchsod]

13. let them waste their money...

everyone knows the health care payment system stinks.

[mwb970]

14. I don't see this as a political issue.

Yet, the usual right-wing suspects line up on the wrong side of the question, as always. It is amazing to me how, even on non-political issues, the right wing is always in lock step, marching off in exactly the wrong direction. On everything.

What gets me about the right-wing wackos is the way they choose the inhuman, illogical, un-American side on every single issue.

It's not just that they can't ever seem to make the right judgment. It's that they tease out the worst, wrongest possible judgment and then go with that. Not sometimes. Every time.

Pathetic.

[My Good Babushka]

17. oh my god!

They could be saving thousands of lives with all the money they are sinking into "think tanks"!

[SpiralHawk]

20. Just more republicon fat cats catapulting the propaganda

Why do insurance companies (republicons) hate America?

[GeorgeGist]

22. Should we have expected anything less ...

from Sicko?

[rudy23]

23. Get ready for the brigade of chain e-mails! It worked for Katrina, why not try it for Sicko?

The email is their most effective tool--nobody has to be accountable for it, so you can lie as much as you want--plus it's coming from a trusted friend. Then everybody who gets it at the office can cackle over it, and the lies embedded withing the email become real.

[kickysnana]

24. Things that will happen to Moore etal

Since they already have done this since 1993 to people trying to get treatment, research and $$ for Lyme Disease:

Wells pinioned (CT)
Personal physicians harassed until they leave the state or quit (all states)
Cars broken into (things returned to parking garage the next day to send message) (NY)
Offices broken into (NY)
List of formation on people who are helping or victims stolen (all states)
Water supply contaminated with ecoli in a small town where groups meet from around the state (MN)
Key employers contacted and people lose their jobs (all states)
People come in posing as "news crew" and bug homes (all states)
News stories killed (all states)
Phony foundations backed by the people mentioned in the OP story to counter (MD-ADLF)
Celebrities recruited to help spread lies about activists (everywhere ie I Pereleman)
Physicians will be brainwashed by media and HMOs http://www.twincities.com/ci_6228215?nclick_check=1
(Subtle but effective in keeping doctors and patients from uniting. Even Hubbard News newscasters said they thought this study was wrong at 5pm lat evening.)
Phoney websites started to contradict ie Quackwatch (effective under another name to keep alternative providers out until the
USSC put them out of business. Quakcwatch Canada site was shut down by their court about 2001.
Phoney research studies paid for to say things like the one above.

[Q3JR4]

25. Is anyone really surpised?

A single payer Universal Health Care plan would mean the end of the Insurance Companies and a curtailment of the rape of this country by the pharmaceutical companies. If I were a CEO of one of these companies and I was legally bound to turn a profit I would put as much money as I could into stopping changes to the current law. After all, making money hand over fist is much better than making no money at all. Fortunately I'd never be CEO of such an organization because I have a conscience.

Corporations pumped millions of dollars into defeating this proposal when the prospect first came to America's lips, and they'll spend millions and billions of dollars to defeat it again. The only problem with that prospect is that consumers are beginning to see their broken health care system as a liability, hence there should be enough grass roots support to change things. With big pharma's deep pockets aligned against a Universal Health Care plan, I think it might be too soon to say in the long run who will win.

Q3JR4.

[LibertyorDeath]

26. They can attack all they want

Everyone knows they are Fucking PARASITES !

[BlooInBloo]

27. please god, please don't let DUers fall for it.

[and-justice-for-all]

28. Saw a prepackaged news story on CNN already..

It was presented by the WEINSTEIN COMPANY: the independent movie production company operated by former Miramax heads Harvey and Bob Weinstein.