IF YOU GO• Who: Wendell Potter, a former Cigna executive who is now a senior fellow on health care at the Center for Media and Democracy, will discuss health care reform and his new book, “Deadly Spin.”• When: 7 p.m. Friday• Where: Unitarian Universalist Church of Chattanooga, 3224 Navajo Drive
When U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., was on MSNBC in 2009 denouncing heath care reform as “a major step toward socialism,” then-Cigna Corp. executive Wendell Potter easily recognized the criticism.
“As I listened to Wamp’s rant, I knew exactly where he had gotten his talking points – from me,” Potter recalled.
Potter, a native of Mountain City, Tenn., said he recognized the value of health care reform for a relatively poor region like much of Wamp’s East Tennessee district. Potter soon decided to change his career and his support for health care changed.
He gave up his top public relations job with Cigna, joined the liberal Center for Media and Democracy and wrote a book, “Deadly Spin,” which he says details the misinformation campaign now going on that “is killing health care and deceiving Americans.”
On Friday, Potter will talk about his book and the contentious battle over health care reform at a speech and book signing at the Unitarian Universalist Church.
Tennessee Republicans in Congress, including newly elected Reps. Scott DesJarlais, a Jasper physician, and Chuck Fleischmann, a Chattanooga attorney, say they plan to vote soon to repeal the health plan adopted last year by the Democratic controlled 111th Congress.
The new GOP lawmakers, as well as outgoing Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, claim the legislation will drive up government costs and regulations unduly and doesn’t do enough to promote personal responsibility.
Fleischmann and DesJarlais defeated their Democratic opponents by campaigning on the need to repeal so-called “ObamaCare.”
Surveys of members of the National Federation of Independent Business, which represents millions of small businesses, show widespread concerns that the measure will drive up employee costs and limit hiring of more workers.
Even the name of the legislation House members will vote upon – H.R. 2 – is billed as “Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act.”
Potter says the “job killing” language is similar to other carefully crafted phrases used by critics of the legislation about “a government takeover of health care” and “death panels” to fan public outrage.
“A lot of people are being told things that are just not true,” Potter said. “There is a desire among people to want to believe in our health care system, and they want to believe that an unregulated health care system is the best in the world. But it’s just not true.”
The United States spends nearly twice the per capita average of most other countries on health care for its citizens but still trails most of the industrialized world in infant mortality and access to basic health care, Potter said. U.S. life expectancy is showing signs of declining for the first time, he said.
Although the Democratic controlled Congress ultimately adopted health care reform last year, Potter said it was shaped by the health insurance industry where he once worked.
“People just don’t understand how much the health care system is under control of the for-profit health insurance companies,” he said.
Insurers pushed for the individual mandate for all Americans to have health insurance and successfully rebuffed proposals for a government plan to compete with private health care plans, Potter said.
“We’ve seen that the number of people without health insurance continues to rise and is now over 50 million persons,” Potter said. “The private insurance market cannot survive much longer without a requirement that we buy their product.”