Wendell Potter spent 20 years as a corporate public relations executive, and last year resigned as head of communications for CIGNA. He knows what he’s talking about.
Having grown up in one of the most conservative and
Republican places in the country — East Tennessee — I understand why many of the people who are showing up at town hall meetings this month are reacting, sometimes violently, when members of Congress try to explain the need for an expanded government role in our health care system.
I also have a lot of conservative friends, including one former co-worker who was laid off by CIGNA several years ago but who nonetheless worries about a “government takeover” of health care.
The most vocal folks at the town hall meetings seem to share the same ideology as my kinfolks in East Tennessee and my former CIGNA buddy: the less government involvement in our lives, the better.
That point couldn’t have been made clearer than by the man standing in line to get free care at Remote Area Medical’s recent health care “expedition” at the Wise County, Virginia, fairgrounds, who told a reporter he was dead set against President Obama’s reform proposal.
Even though he didn’t have health insurance, and could see the desperation in the faces of thousands of others all around him who were in similar straits, he was more worried about the possibility of having to pay more taxes than he was eager to make sure he and his neighbors wouldn’t have to wait in line to get care provided by volunteer doctors in animal stalls.
Absolutely stunning.
A man standing in line for free medical care, like cattle lined up for vaccinations, is opposed to health care reform because he might have to pay more taxes. Somehow, I think that if he’s forced to stand in line for such medical care, he’s not in the $250,000 or more earnings bracket. And if HE’S standing in that line, I know his children are standing in that line, and opposing a brighter, healthier future for his children is criminal. These free health care fairs are not a one time deal, they take place annually. Thank goodness, right? But we can change the status quo so these fairs are not necessary.
Mr Potter ends with this:
So the next time you hear someone warning against a “government takeover” of our health care system, or that the creation of a public health insurance option would send us down the “slippery slope toward socialism,” know that someone like I used to be wrote those terms, knowing it might turn many of the very people who would benefit most from meaningful reform into unwitting spokespeople for the industry. (Emphasis added)
Believe me, I’m not happy when I call the town hall screamers “Useful idiots.”
Read the rest of Wendell Potter’s commentary here.
HT: Briseadh na Faire
