Politics

Obama?s Patients? Bill of Rights: One Important Right is Missing, Thanks to Corporate Spin and Fear-Mongering

By Wendell Potter

President Obama is calling a big part of the health care reform bill he signed into law last March a Patients? Bill of Rights, suggesting that many of the consumer protections contained in the new law were the same ones the health insurance industry succeeded in killing time and again over many years through a fear-mongering campaign it secretly financed.

Obama is right -- but only to a point. An important right was missing from his list of consumer protections because, once again, insurers had made sure it would not be part of any bill that reached his desk.

The insurance industry defeated many attempts to pass a Patients? Bill of Rights in the 1990s and 2000s, despite considerable bipartisan support in both the House and Senate. It did this by funneling millions of dollars through a big PR firm it hired to set up a front group -- the Health Benefits Coalition -- whose sole purpose was to scare people away from the legislation. The industry also had one especially important ally: Obama?s predecessor in the White House, George W. Bush. Bush threatened to veto any Patients? Bill of Rights that he (read: the insurance industry and its business allies) didn?t like. Lawmakers were never able to agree on a single bill that Senators and House members could agree to (the House approved a weakened version of the bill Bush presumably would sign but the Senate refused to weaken its bill), so they eventually just gave up.

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Full post as published by PR Watch on June 28, 2010 (boomark / email).