Industry Cash-Roots Have Turned Health Reform into Taxpayer Ripoff [1]
Submitted by John Stauber [2] on
The Los Angeles Times reports [3] that the health insurance industry has "rallied its lobbying and grassroots [4] resources so successfully in the early stages of the healthcare overhaul deliberations that it is poised to reap a financial windfall. The half-dozen leading overhaul proposals circulating in Congress would require all citizens to have health insurance, which would guarantee insurers tens of millions of new customers -- many of whom would get government subsidies to help pay the companies' premiums." CMD's Sheldon Rampton noted last December [5] that the 1993 Clinton reform effort failed "after it encountered a concerted (corporate) grassroots campaign led by the healthcare and insurance industries, using front groups such as the Coalition for Health Insurance Choices [6]. ... To defeat the Clinton health plan, Robert Hoopes [7] acted as 'grassroots coordinator political education specialist' for the Independent Insurance Agents of America [8]. Speaking at a PR conference after the plan had been defeated, he explained how they did it: 'We had time to gin up the grassroots, mail our letters, educate our membership, have town hall meetings; I could travel all over the country and get my members excited about it. When it came time for a vote we were ready.'" CMD has been reporting on the hidden power of corporate grassroots [9] since our inception sixteen years ago, and particularly about its defeat of health care reform in our 1995 book Toxic Sludge Is Good for You [10].