Former health insurance executive Wendell Potter believes the House Republican vote to repeal healthcare reform, scheduled for Wednesday, is nothing more than a calculated show. Rather, says Potter, the Republicans don’t really want to repeal the whole thing — just the parts the insurance industry doesn’t like. Below is an except of an essay Potter wrote in The Cap Times, a publication based in Wisconsin:
Wendell Potter: Deadly spin on health care repeal
Advocates of health care reform who are fearful — or hopeful, as the case may be — that Republicans will be able to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) need to understand that the GOP has no real intention of repealing it.
The rhetoric of repeal is just a smoke screen to obscure the real objective of the “repeal and replace” caucus: to preserve the sections of the law that big insurance and its business allies like and strip out the regulations and consumer protections they don’t like.
Read the rest of the article by clicking here. Below is a YouTube video posted by “joefriendly” of a talk Potter gave before the New York chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program, as part of a tour for his book, Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans. In the 1½-hour talk, Potter describes some of the tactics the health insurance industry has used against the healthcare reform movement. His talk begins about seven minutes into the video. Following his presentation are questions from the audience, made up mostly of New York-area physicians.