Insurance Firms are Buying Votes

From The Pilot: October 16, 2009

What a money trail -- The New York Times reports that the health insurance industry is spending $1.4 million per day to defeat health care reform.
So it now seems clear who's bank rolling some of these negative ads. CNN reports a mathematical relationship between how much industry money a legislator has accepted and that legislator's position on health care reform. The more money accepted, the more likely he or she is to oppose reform. These latter figures, speaking as they do to a powerful, corrupting influence, should be publicized more widely.
For myself, I have been listening to Wendell Potter. For close to 20 years, Potter, as a Cigna Communications executive, saw the contradiction between what was real and what he told the public. Mindful of his hypocrisy, and disgusted with the business, he left Cigna. As a result, he easily sees through what's going on right now.
His accounts remind me of what insiders in another industry had to say about their former employers. That industry? Big tobacco. Big tobacco knew the truth for years but told the public the opposite. That fight for honesty has been going on for four decades. Indeed it's still not over.

Potter's analysis only helps confirm what the money trail above already says. Health insurers are using health care premiums to finance the defeat of health care reform. Surely, we can deal more effectively with the health insurance industry than we have been doing with the tobacco industry. Surely we are not going to be fooled by the same sort of double talk -- a campaign Potter has called "disingenuous" and "duplicitous" from the beginning. Why succumb to these distortions? We don't have to give in. I have written to our North Carolina Senators and Congressman. I urge you to do the same!
Edward N. Squire Jr.
Seven Lakes