The Wonk Room

Corporate-Sponsored Patients United Now

After orchestrating and funding the so-called Tea Parties movement, Americans for Prosperity — a nationwide front group founded and funded by the right-wing polluter Koch Industries — is launching an ad campaign characterizing President Obama’s effort to reform the health care system as a government take-over that will ration care and care and deny treatments.

Americans for Prosperity is notorious for its fake grassroots efforts, funneling millions of dollars into conservative campaigns designed to undermine Democratic initiatives. As Lee Fang put it, “AFP is a professional AstroTurf machine”:

- Hosted ‘Drill Baby, Drill’ rallies around the country.

- Financed Joe the Plumber’s tour against the Employees’ Free Choice Act and other anti-EFCA rallies.

- Started NoStimulus.com, “a grassroots website that we hope will be a focal point for the widespread frustration ordinary Americans feel at the runaway government growth that we see during good economic times and bad.”

Now, operating under the name Patients United Now, Americans for Prosperity — which is mostly funded by large multinational corporations — is masquerading as an organic grassroots movement outraged over the Presidents health care proposals:

We are people just like you. We went to D.C. with questions about “reform”— because we all favor policies which keep insurance costs down and help those patients with pre-existing conditions get coverage. Buying “care insurance” should be like buying car insurance: flexible, transparent and simple. We support health care for the poor through Medicaid.

But what we found SHOCKED US: Radical solutions. Discussions behind closed doors. Patients like us NOT included, just big companies, lobbyists, unions and politicians.

For many in D.C. cutting costs means CUTTING CARE—-your care.

The effort provides cover or ‘grassroots clout’ for conservative politicians and activists to oppose the President’s health care initiative. But this collection of trumped-up charges, outright lies and complete fabrications makes little headway in critiquing the President’s actual proposal. Because just like all other peddlers of the “government take-over” critique — Frank Luntz, Conservatives for Patients Rights, Betsy McCaughey, and Sally Pipes — the goal is to define Obama’s proposal in their terms rather than to engage in a debate about health care or offer real solutions to the crisis. As Frank Luntz admitted to the New York Times, “we don’t know what he is proposing. We want to avoid ‘a Washington takeover.’”

A so-called “government-takeover” may be a personal ideological crusade for AFP — whose founders also established the conservative CATO organization — and its AstroTurf movement of corporate clients, but most Americans support greater government involvement in the health care system. A recent poll by Lake Research for Health Care For America Now shows that there is “intense and widespread support” for the choice of a public health insurance plan, with 73% of voters favoring a choice of a public or private plan, including large majorities of Democrats and independents (77% and 79%) but surprisingly, even a high plurality of Republicans (63%).

The cast of health care crisis deniers and stone throwers, whose constituency are only as large as their fund raising outreach efforts, are prominent not for their message, but for their coffers. Frank Luntz represents Blue Cross Blue Shield, CIGNA Dental Health and Pfizer. Conservatives for Patients Rights are funded by ‘undisclosed’ special interests and a $20 million personal investment from CEO Rick Scott, Betsy McCaughey sits on the board of a medical device company and Sally Pipes’ Pacific Research Institute receives money from Altria (formerly known as Philip Morris), Microsoft, Pfizer and ExxonMobil.

So if the question is, why do it? Why lie about the President’s efforts? Then the answer is a mix of ideological conservative zeal, political calculation — denying Democrats a victory on the issue — and businesses interest. Ultimately, these groups are expressing the voices and opinions of their particular backers — large corporations — not the American public.

Sally Pipes Touts Letter To The Editor As Proof Of Academic Credentials

Yesterday, during a Congressional hearing on health care reform, Rep. Bruce Braley (D-IA) challenged health care crisis denier Sally Pipes on her academic credentials. Pipes assured Braley that she was indeed a health care “scholar” who had been published in the peer-reviewed journal Health Affairs:

BRALEY: Have you published any peer reviewed treatises in a journal of economics on health care policy?
PIPES: Yes.

BRALEY: Can you give us some examples?

PIPES: I’ve done some things in Health Affairs over the past and –

BRALEY: But can you just identify the scholarly journal that’s a peer reviewed journal of economics?

PIPES: Well, Health Affairs is, I think. I don’t know whether you would say it is.

UNINDENTIFIED: It’s peer reviewed.

Listen:

Searching ‘Pipes’ in the author field of the Health Affairs website yields one result — a Letter to the Editor titled ‘Piping A Different Tune.’ In the letter, Pipes responds to what she describes as a “hostile” book review of Who Killed Health Care: America’s $2 Trillion Medical Problem–and the Consumer Driven Cure:

The author of the review responds to Pipes, highlighting her not-so-academic approach to policy: “Sally Pipes’ riposte to my review of Regina Herzlinger’s book, Who Killed Health Care, offers rhetoric and faith-based posturing but little evidence. Whilst it can be intellectual fun and politically advantageous to repeat the principles of bottom-up, makret oriented health care, the practice is usually inflationary, inefficient, and inequitable.”

Sally Pipes, No More Substantive Than Peeps

When Rep. Bruce Braley (D-IA) asked health care crisis denier Sally Pipes about her credentials to testify as “an expert” on health care issues before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health, Pipes’ lack of any serious background in health care policy exposed her real function. You see, Pipes doesn’t hold a masters degree in health policy or public policy. Nor she does have much experience in academia:

Listen:

With her ‘BA with honors’ in economics, Pipes leads a tiny ‘think tank,’ Pacific Research Institute, and advances special interest (PRI’s list of donors include Altria (formerly known as Philip Morris), Microsoft, Pfizer and ExxonMobil) agendas. PRI promotes itself a s “free-market think tank,” but Pipes offers little in the way of solutions. During her testimony, Pipes simply regurgitated Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) health care plan:

If we could change the tax code to level the playing field by removing the tax advantage from those who get their insurance through their employer, reduce state mandates that add between 20-50% to the cost of a premium, allow the purchase of insurance across state lines, and have medical malpractice reform, we could reduce costs and significantly reduce the number of uninsured in this country.

Pipes’ real contribution is her ability to conflate the administrations’ health care proposals with the evils of socialized Canadian medicine and reference discredited health care crisis deniers along the way. For instance, when Braley asked Pipes why “dont’ people who come from your point of view come to this committee and talk about constructive ways we’re going to reduce preventable medical errors” and lower overall health care costs, Pipes quoted fellow health care denier Betsy McCaughey!

The most outrageous moment of the hearing, however, belonged to Chairman Frank Pallone (D-NJ). In trying to keep the committee on time, Pallone accidentally pronounced Pipes as Peeps. Happy Easter, Sally!

GOP Taps Global Warming Denier To Speak Out Against Health Care Reform

The House Subcommittee on Energy and Commerce is holding a hearing on “Making Health Care Work for American Families: Ensuring Affordable Coverage” today and health care crisis denier Sally Pipes — who recently wrote The Ten Top Myths of American Health Care — is testifying at the invitation of the Republicans.

She’s busy propagating the myth that “the long-term goal of the new Administration and the Democrats in Congress is “Medicaid for All.” In her prepared remarks, Pipes compares Obama’s plan to the Canadian model:

My view is that the government plan will be priced lower than the private plans. The result will be “crowding out” of the private plans and a fateful turn down the road to a Canadian style “Medicaid for All” program. We may have universal coverage but not universal access. Taxes will increase significantly and weaken the entrepreneurial spirit in this country.

This is the same Sally Pipes who, in 1998, wrote an article to dismiss global climate change as an imaginary “hobgoblin” created by “propaganda” from the Environmental Protection Agency. The article also criticized the Clinton Administration for advancing the notion that efforts to reduce greenhouse gases could be harnessed to spur economic growth.

So this is who the Republicans invite to discuss reforming the health care system? An old global warming denier who caricatures the health care debate without engaging in the substance of the proposal? Things sure have changed since 93….