It was interesting to listen to President Obama’s speech yesterday about the debate going on over the health care bill. He spoke of the "deceptive and dishonest" efforts of health insurance companies.
I ran across this poster from the past today:
Many of the writers here at the IB have been covering the claims of death panels, that Republicans will be targeted, that the premiums will go up. Just small examples of the many ways the health care bill is being opposed.
It’s political and it’s a long line of opposition by companies that put profits over people. Injuryboard member Wayne Parsons, did a great job covering the history with his piece on the history of tort reform. The whole piece is well worth a read, but the point I want to take a minute with today is:
The conspiracy consists of a seemingly independent organizations. “The CALA [Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse] Files – The Secret Campaign by Big Tobacco and Other Major Industries to Take Away your Rights,” shows that, since its inception in the 1980s, the industry-funded tort reform movement has pursued a strategy of creating and funding numerous seemingly-independent advocacy organizations that push tort-reform arguments, work to discredit opponents, and use marketing methods to change underlying public attitudes over the long term. Well-known tort reform organizations include the American Tort Reform Association (ATRA) – “a coalition of more than 300 major corporations and trade associations,” according to “The CALA Files” – and its numerous state Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse (CALA) organizations, as well as several state Lawsuit Abuse Watch (LAW) organizations
The above poster is an example of how it is done. Sure today it looks ridicules, but at the time it was presented as a legitimate claim. The sad irony is that there are probably many health insurance companies that denied the claims of the people that believed the poster.
