The other day a friend shared her story about receiving a letter from Anthem denying her coverage for a drug essential for controlling a serious heart problem. On the same day, another friend told me about his frustration with the lack of progress toward health care reform. His wife is Canadian and he has seen firsthand the effectiveness of a health care system where no one is left out.
I’m frustrated because I believe the majority of the American people want the security of “Medicare for all,” but fear and confusion are being sewn about what such a plan would entail. Just a few months ago polls showed overwhelming support for real health care reform. However, recent polls reflect the effectiveness of a disinformation campaign designed to maintain the status quo profits of the insurance companies. And for insurance companies health care is a most profitable business. A Bangor Daily News editorial pointed out that from 2000 to 2007 profits for the insurance industry rose by 428 percent with executive officers at those companies collecting an average of $11.9 million each.
While there is genuine fear and anger expressed in opposition to a proposed public option, the outrage is being stoked by a campaign of deception about what health care reform would entail. The systematic distortion of the truth is most often carried out by politicians and by front group ads with the appearance of objectivity. The insurance companies who have the most to gain are usually invisible.
But Wendell Potter, a former executive at one of the largest insurers, CIGNA, appeared on a Bill Moyers program. He affirmed in testimony before Congress that he had participated in designing campaigns to deliberately mislead and undermine efforts that would provide health care for all. “The industry and its backers are using fear tactics, as they did in 1994, to tar a transparent and accountable, publicly accountable health care option as, quote, ‘government-run health care’. What we have today, Mr. chairman, is Wall Street-run health care that has proven itself an untrustworthy partner to its customers, to the doctors and hospitals who deliver care and to the state and federal governments that attempt to regulate it.”
It is easy to get discouraged when the debate gets hijacked by those who will profit from growing health care costs and denial of coverage to those in need.
The majority of us, who want improved “Medicare for all,” don’t have the dollars to influence the politicians we have elected to represent us. We are reminded of the frustration we felt as our representatives gave a blank check to the Bush administration to wage an endless “war on terror” in response to Sept. 11, despite the overwhelming domestic and global opposition to a war on Iraq. Has that war made us safer than we were after the Sept. 11 attacks? Now we are told we must send thousands more troops into Afghanistan and cannot afford the cost of providing basic health insurance for everyone.
What can we, the majority, do to make our voices heard so that the profit-making health industry, composed of huge insurance and pharmaceutical corporations, and military contractors who profit from war, don’t define the debate about our priorities and the future of so many around the world? There are so many who have not yet found a nonviolent way to express their concerns or share their vision of how we can best take care of each other as a community. Let’s show there is a visible vibrant grassroots movement that continues to speak for prioritizing human needs that can lead to greater security.
On Saturday, Sept. 12, one day after the anniversary of Sept. 11, we invite you to join with others for a “Walk for Real Security” in Bangor. Join us at noon as we gather at Davenport Park on Main Street across from the Bangor Homeless Shelter. We will take a symbolic route from the shelter to Eastern Maine Medical Center and back, about a three mile walk, drumming and carrying signs to express what we feel is needed: health care for all, good jobs, sustainable environmental policies, education and a foreign policy based on diplomacy and cooperation.
Ilze Petersons works with the Peace & Justice Center of Eastern Maine.