Consumer Law

Tobacco and ?Tort Reform? Consultants Used By Health Insurers to Smear Health Care Reform and Sicko

By Joe Consumer

When you think of health care and tobacco, I?m assuming what comes to mind are the shocking statistics, like ?every year in the U.S. over 392,000 people die from tobacco-caused disease, making it the leading cause of preventable death.? Plus another 50,000 dying per year from second had smoke.   

Hold onto your hats.

In 2000, the Center for Justice & Democracy published a breakthrough study on some of the more nefarious origins of the ?tort reform? movement called The CALA Files -- The Secret Campaign By Big Tobacco And Other Major Industries To Take Away Your Rights, by Carl Deal and Joanne Doroshow. 

Here are just a couple choice excerpts:

By 1992, the American Tort Reform Association had hired a public relations firm to help it reach its ?tort reform? goals by creating local ?grassroots? front groups.  The contract was with a subsidiary of public relations titan Grey Advertising called APCO & Associates, a company that had specialized in ?tort reform? lobbying since the 1980s and had worked for both insurance companies, like State Farm, and the tobacco industry.

A document uncovered in the Philip Morris files of the Tobacco Archives indicates that APCO and Neal Cohen, its ?principal account executive on the PM [Philip Morris] Family Tort Project? had been, since 1988, ?assisting the PM Family? on ?national and state tort coalitions and other tort reform advocates with political, communications and grassroots strategies and related programs.?

There?s much more in The CALA Files about how APCO inserted itself into "tort reform" efforts in Texas, Louisiana and elsewhere using tobacco money that was funneled through a Washington DC corporate law firm called Covington & Burling.  Covington's anti-jury partner, Philip K. Howard, is someone we?ve covered before.

Here is where it gets really interesting.  Yesterday, former Cigna VP and now whistleblower Wendell Potter told Democracy Now?s host Amy Goodman about the panic that occurred in the health insurance industry when it learned that Michael Moore would be producing a documentary on the health care industry, called Sicko.  Desperate to ensure that the film failed and that health care reform did not succeed, the health insurers hired APCO to create similar front groups to smear Michael, Sicko and any threat to insurance industry profits.  

These excepts need little comment so please read for yourself:

AMY GOODMAN: And so, what was the grassroots strategy, if you had one, as the movie came out in the United States?

WENDELL POTTER: Well, one key component was to fund a front group, and that is something that I write about quite a bit in the book, about how special interests, and the insurance industry, in particular, will use premium dollars to funnel thousands and thousands, if not millions, of dollars to big PR firms to set up fake grassroots organizations?astroturf, as we call it?and front groups. And in this case, there was a front group that was set up called Health Care America, and the sole purpose for it to be set up was to attack Michael Moore and to attack the notion of a single-payer system in this country.

AMY GOODMAN: And who were the people who populated Health Care America?

WENDELL POTTER: There were just a couple of people. There was a woman. I think her name was?I can?t remember her name. Sarah Berk, I think, was her name. But the media contact for it was a guy named Bill Pierce, who I had known and worked with in the past. He used to be a PR guy for Blue Cross/Blue Shield Association. At that time, he was in the public relations firm APCO Worldwide. He was listed as a media contact, and if you called his number, you would have reached him at his desk at APCO Worldwide. It didn?t have any substance. It was just a?

AMY GOODMAN: What is APCO Worldwide?

WENDELL POTTER: It is a very, very big PR firm that was started several years ago by a big Washington law firm, Arnold & Porter. The A and P is Arnold & Porter, and they were defending?

AMY GOODMAN: APCO.

WENDELL POTTER: Yeah, and they were defending tobacco companies. So they felt that they needed to have help in the court of public opinion, as well as in the courtroom.

AMY GOODMAN: And what did Health Care America?who did they say they were?

WENDELL POTTER: They said they were representing consumers. And?

AMY GOODMAN: Did anyone expose this at the time?

WENDELL POTTER: No. No one did.

Potter goes on to discuss how lazy reporters and producers from the New York Times and CNN were duped by APCO.  And it gets even nastier.  Potter continued:

WENDELL POTTER: At one point during a strategy meeting, one of the people from APCO said that if our efforts, our initial efforts, were not successful, then we?d have to move to an element of the campaign to push Michael Moore off a cliff??

Not literally, of course.  But figuratively is bad enough.  I think it's time for a new dead bolt.

Full post as published by ThePopTort on November 17, 2010 (boomark / email).