The Lie Machine Killing Health Care Reform

"According to internal documents obtained by Rolling Stone, Conservatives for Patients' Rights had been working closely for weeks as a 'coalition partner' with three other right-wing groups in a plot to unleash irate mobs at town-hall meetings ... . 'The insurance industry is up to the same dirty tricks, using the same devious PR practices it has used for many years, to kill reform,' says Wendell Potter, who stepped down last year as chief of corporate communications for health insurance giant CIGNA. ... The campaign to mobilize the town-hall mobs began with a script written by the right's foremost fearmonger, Frank Luntz" who "outlined a battle plan for conservatives to block what he branded the 'Washington takeover' of health care. ... Distributed widely to Republicans on Capitol Hill, the memo framed the right-wing attack on health care reform. ... Armed with the script ... a tight coalition of deep-pocketed groups took the lead in mobilizing the town-hall protests. The two primary groups -- Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks -- actually grew out of the 2003 breakup of an outfit called Citizens for a Sound Economy that had been integral in the fight against Hillarycare."