PNHP

The fake persuaders

The fake persuaders

Corporations are inventing people to rubbish their opponents on the internet

By George Monbiot
The Guardian
Tuesday 14 May 2002

Persuasion works best when it’s invisible. The most effective marketing worms its way into our consciousness, leaving intact the perception that we have reached our opinions and made our choices independently. As old as humankind itself, over the past few years this approach has been refined, with the help of the internet, into a technique called “viral marketing”. Last month, the viruses appear to have murdered their host. One of the world’s foremost scientific journals was persuaded to do something it had never done before, and retract a paper it had published.

While, in the past, companies have created fake citizens’ groups to campaign in favour of trashing forests or polluting rivers, now they create fake citizens. Messages purporting to come from disinterested punters are planted on listservers at critical moments, disseminating misleading information in the hope of recruiting real people to the cause. Detective work by the campaigner Jonathan Matthews and the freelance journalist Andy Rowell shows how a PR firm contracted to the biotech company Monsanto appears to have played a crucial but invisible role in shaping scientific discourse.

Monsanto knows better than any other corporation the costs of visibility. Its clumsy attempts, in 1997, to persuade people that they wanted to eat GM food all but destroyed the market for its crops. Determined never to make that mistake again, it has engaged the services of a firm which knows how to persuade without being seen to persuade. The Bivings Group specialises in internet lobbying.

An article on its website, entitled Viral Marketing: How to Infect the World, warns that “there are some campaigns where it would be undesirable or even disastrous to let the audience know that your organisation is directly involved… it simply is not an intelligent PR move. In cases such as this, it is important to first ‘listen’ to what is being said online… Once you are plugged into this world, it is possible to make postings to these outlets that present your position as an uninvolved third party… Perhaps the greatest advantage of viral marketing is that your message is placed into a context where it is more likely to be considered seriously.” A senior executive from Monsanto is quoted on the Bivings site thanking the PR firm for its “outstanding work”.

On November 29 last year, two researchers at the University of California, Berkeley published a paper in Nature magazine, which claimed that native maize in Mexico had been contaminated, across vast distances, by GM pollen. The paper was a disaster for the biotech companies seeking to persuade Mexico, Brazil and the European Union to lift their embargos on GM crops.

Even before publication, the researchers knew their work was hazardous. One of them, Ignacio Chapela, was approached by the director of a Mexican corporation, who first offered him a glittering research post if he withheld his paper, then told him that he knew where to find his children. In the US, Chapela’s opponents have chosen a different form of assassination.

On the day the paper was published, messages started to appear on a biotechnology listserver used by more than 3,000 scientists, called AgBioWorld. The first came from a correspondent named “Mary Murphy”. Chapela is on the board of directors of the Pesticide Action Network, and therefore, she claimed, “not exactly what you’d call an unbiased writer”. Her posting was followed by a message from an “Andura Smetacek”, claiming, falsely, that Chapela’s paper had not been peer-reviewed, that he was “first and foremost an activist” and that the research had been published in collusion with environmentalists. The next day, another email from “Smetacek” asked “how much money does Chapela take in speaking fees, travel reimbursements and other donations… for his help in misleading fear-based marketing campaigns?”

The messages from Murphy and Smetacek stimulated hundreds of others, some of which repeated or embellished the accusations they had made. Senior biotechnologists called for Chapela to be sacked from Berkeley. AgBioWorld launched a petition pointing to the paper’s “fundamental flaws”.

There do appear to be methodological problems with the research Chapela and his colleague David Quist had published, but this is hardly unprecedented in a scientific journal. All science is, and should be, subject to challenge and disproof. But in this case the pressure on Nature was so severe that its editor did something unparalleled in its 133-year history: last month he published, alongside two papers challenging Quist and Chapela’s, a retraction in which he wrote that their research should never have been published.

So the campaign against the researchers was extraordinarily successful; but who precisely started it? Who are “Mary Murphy” and “Andura Smetacek”?

Both claim to be ordinary citizens, without any corporate links. The Bivings Group says it has “no knowledge of them”. “Mary Murphy” uses a hotmail account for posting messages to AgBioWorld. But a message satirising the opponents of biotech, sent by “Mary Murphy” from the same hotmail account to another server two years ago, contains the identification bw6.bivwood.com. Bivwood.com is the property of Bivings Woodell, which is part of the Bivings Group.

When I wrote to her to ask whether she was employed by Bivings and whether Mary Murphy was her real name, she replied that she had “no ties to industry”. But she refused to answer my questions on the grounds that “I can see by your articles that you made your mind up long ago about biotech”. The interesting thing about this response is that my message to her did not mention biotechnology. I told her only that I was researching an article about internet lobbying.

Smetacek has, on different occasions, given her address as “London” and “New York”. But the electoral rolls, telephone directories and credit card records in both London and the entire US reveal no “Andura Smetacek”. Her name appears only on AgBioWorld and a few other listservers, on which she has posted scores of messages falsely accusing groups such as Greenpeace of terrorism. My letters to her have elicited no response. But a clue to her possible identity is suggested by her constant promotion of “the Centre For Food and Agricultural Research”. The centre appears not to exist, except as a website, which repeatedly accuses greens of plotting violence. Cffar.org is registered to someone called Manuel Theodorov. Manuel Theodorov is the “director of associations” at Bivings Woodell.

Even the website on which the campaign against the paper in Nature was launched has attracted suspicion. Its moderator, the biotech enthusiast Professor CS Prakash, claims to have no connection to the Bivings Group. But when Jonathan Matthews was searching the site’s archives he received the following error message: “can’t connect to MySQL server on apollo.bivings.com”. Apollo.bivings.com is the main server of the Bivings Group.

“Sometimes,” Bivings boasts, “we win awards. Sometimes only the client knows the precise role we played.” Sometimes, in other words, real people have no idea that they are being managed by fake ones.

Doctors' group backs single-payer amendment to House health care bill

16,000 physicians urge passage of substitute 'Medicare for all' motion

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 16, 2009

Contact:
Quentin Young, M.D., (312) 782-6006, info@pnhp.org
Mark Almberg, (312) 782-6006, cell: (312) 622-0996, mark@pnhp.org

Calling the health reform bill released by House Democrats a “proven failure,” an organization of 16,000 doctors called today for the passage of an amendment to the bill that would essentially overturn it and implement a single-payer, Medicare-for-all system.

The single-payer amendment to H.R. 3200, the House tri-committee bill unveiled two days ago by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), is scheduled to be offered by Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) next Monday at the Energy and Commerce Committee, although it could be introduced as early as tomorrow.

Weiner is a co-sponsor of another House bill, the U.S. National Health Care Act, H.R. 676, sponsored by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.). Conyers’ bill, which has 85 co-sponsors, would create a single-payer system. Weiner’s amendment to H.R. 3200 would basically substitute the provisions of H.R. 676 for its present content.

Dr. Quentin Young, national coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program, characterized the incremental reform bill offered by House Democrats this week as a “proven failure,” noting that state-based reforms of this type — Massachusetts being the latest example — have repeatedly foundered.

“The House proposal mimics the imploding Massachusetts reform,” Young said. “The state is dumping 30,000 legal residents off insurance, and the largest safety-net hospital is suing the state for decimating the hospital’s budget to shore up the reform. Meanwhile, 1 in 6 Massachusetts residents are unable to pay their medical bills, and 18 percent of residents with insurance skipped care last year because they couldn’t afford it. The Massachusetts model is no solution.”

Young greeted Weiner’s amendment, noting that it complements the efforts of other single-payer advocates who have lobbied, testified before Congress or otherwise pushed to ensure that national health insurance is “on the table” in the health reform debate.

Young added: “Although many supporters of the House tri-committee bill are well-intentioned, it’s an inconvenient truth that only by replacing the private health insurance industry with a single-payer, Medicare-for-All program can we save $400 billion annually on overhead and bureaucracy — enough to provide comprehensive, first-dollar coverage to all.”

The Chicago physician said a new study showing that 62 percent of personal bankruptcies in the U.S. are linked to medical bills or illness, and that three-quarters of those affected had insurance at the onset of their illness, is but the latest evidence that the private insurance model of financing care is breaking down and must be replaced.

“Surveys show that two-thirds of the public favor national health insurance, as do most physicians,” Young said. “Over 550 labor organizations support H.R. 676, as do scores of civic and religious groups and city governments. Our lawmakers should rise above the blandishments of the medical-industrial complex and vote for what’s in the nation’s best interest. That means supporting Weiner’s amendment and supporting H.R. 676.”

False promise of choice

For Many Workers, Insurance Choices May be Limited

By Mary Agnes Carey and Julie Appleby
Kaiser Health News
July 15, 2009
President Obama and leading Democrats have stressed that people who like their employer-sponsored insurance would be able to keep it, under a health care overhaul. But they haven’t emphasized the flip side: That people who don’t like their coverage might have to keep it.
Under the main health bills being debated in Congress, many people with job-based insurance could find it difficult to impossible to switch to health plans on a new insurance exchange, even if the plans there were cheaper or offered better coverage. The restrictions extend to any government-run plan, which would be offered on the exchange.
The provisions could change, and there are a few exceptions: Workers would be allowed to buy insurance through the exchange if their job-based coverage gobbled up too much of their incomes or was too skimpy. Also, under the House proposal, people could get insurance through the exchange if they paid their entire premiums ā€” a cost that would be prohibitive for many workers.
Democratic lawmakers and administration officials say the restrictions are critical to maintaining a strong employer-based insurance system, which covers 158 million Americans.
But critics argue that the rules run counter to suggestions from health care reform advocates that an overhaul could provide people with a broader choice of insurance options. The rules, they say, could be especially unfair to some lower-income workers who are enrolled in costly job-based insurance. Also, they argue, the restrictions would hurt the proposed public plan by limiting enrollment.
Jonathan Oberlander, associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said the restrictions create a “big gap between the rhetoric and the reality” of health reform.
“The rhetoric is that Americans will gain new alternatives,” he said. “But the reality is that they are putting up firewalls that are going to restrict the access of people with employer-sponsored insurance to the exchange.”
One result, he said, is that any public plan would be substantially smaller than what many backers are envisioning. That would reduce the public plan’s power to compete with private insurers and hold down costs, he said. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that nine million to 10 million people would enroll in the public plan by 2019.
http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2009/July/15/Firewall.aspx

Imagine presidential candidate Barack Obama telling his audiences during the campaign, “We promise you choice. For most of you already receiving your health insurance through your place on employment, we will provide you with the choice of keeping that insurance plan or paying heavy financial penalties for dropping off the plan, no matter how unhappy you are with it. For a select few of you, we will offer the choice of private plans within an insurance exchange, even if you can’t afford them, and maybe even throw in a public plan that a couple of you may be able to purchase, if you meet our rigid enrollment criteria.”
Choice? Over a year ago in a Quote of the Day I discussed the decision to market health reform as a matter of choice – of keeping the plan you have if that’s your choice. The title of that qotd was “Message trumps policy?”
This isn’t an “I told you so.” Er… uh… I guess it is.
If reform is to be effective, it must be based on sound policy science. Instead, it is being based on political messaging. It may sound good, but nothing fits together. What a disaster.

False promise of choice

For Many Workers, Insurance Choices May be Limited

By Mary Agnes Carey and Julie Appleby
Kaiser Health News
July 15, 2009

President Obama and leading Democrats have stressed that people who like their employer-sponsored insurance would be able to keep it, under a health care overhaul. But they haven’t emphasized the flip side: That people who don’t like their coverage might have to keep it.

Under the main health bills being debated in Congress, many people with job-based insurance could find it difficult to impossible to switch to health plans on a new insurance exchange, even if the plans there were cheaper or offered better coverage. The restrictions extend to any government-run plan, which would be offered on the exchange.

The provisions could change, and there are a few exceptions: Workers would be allowed to buy insurance through the exchange if their job-based coverage gobbled up too much of their incomes or was too skimpy. Also, under the House proposal, people could get insurance through the exchange if they paid their entire premiums Ć¢ā‚¬ā€ a cost that would be prohibitive for many workers.

Democratic lawmakers and administration officials say the restrictions are critical to maintaining a strong employer-based insurance system, which covers 158 million Americans.

But critics argue that the rules run counter to suggestions from health care reform advocates that an overhaul could provide people with a broader choice of insurance options. The rules, they say, could be especially unfair to some lower-income workers who are enrolled in costly job-based insurance. Also, they argue, the restrictions would hurt the proposed public plan by limiting enrollment.

Jonathan Oberlander, associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said the restrictions create a “big gap between the rhetoric and the reality” of health reform.

“The rhetoric is that Americans will gain new alternatives,” he said. “But the reality is that they are putting up firewalls that are going to restrict the access of people with employer-sponsored insurance to the exchange.”

One result, he said, is that any public plan would be substantially smaller than what many backers are envisioning. That would reduce the public plan’s power to compete with private insurers and hold down costs, he said. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that nine million to 10 million people would enroll in the public plan by 2019.

http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2009/July/15/Firewall.aspx

Comment:

By Don McCanne, MD

Imagine presidential candidate Barack Obama telling his audiences during the campaign, “We promise you choice. For most of you already receiving your health insurance through your place on employment, we will provide you with the choice of keeping that insurance plan or paying heavy financial penalties for dropping off the plan, no matter how unhappy you are with it. For a select few of you, we will offer the choice of private plans within an insurance exchange, even if you can’t afford them, and maybe even throw in a public plan that a couple of you may be able to purchase, if you meet our rigid enrollment criteria.”

Choice? Over a year ago in a Quote of the Day I discussed the decision to market health reform as a matter of choice – of keeping the plan you have if that’s your choice. The title of that qotd was “Message trumps policy?”

This isn’t an “I told you so.” Er… uh… I guess it is.

If reform is to be effective, it must be based on sound policy science. Instead, it is being based on political messaging. It may sound good, but nothing fits together. What a disaster.

Health Insurance Whistle-Blower Knows Where the Bodies Are Buried

By Amy Goodman
TruthDig.com
Posted on Jul 14, 2009

Wendell Potter is the health insurance industry’s worst nightmare. He’s a whistle-blower. Potter, the former chief spokesperson for insurance giant CIGNA, recently testified before Congress, “I saw how they confuse their customers and dump the sick–all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors.”

Potter was deeply involved in CIGNA and industrywide strategies for maintaining their profitable grip on U.S. health care. He told me: “The thing they fear most is a single-payer plan. They fear even the public insurance option being proposed; they’ll pull out all the stops they can to defeat that to try to scare people into thinking that embracing a public health insurance option would lead down the slippery slope toward socialism … putting a government bureaucrat between you and your doctor. They’ve used those talking points for years, and they’ve always worked.”

In 2007, CIGNA denied a California teenager, Nataline Sarkisyan, coverage for a liver transplant. Her family went to the media. The California Nurses Association joined in. Under mounting pressure, CIGNA finally granted coverage for the procedure. But it was too late. Two hours later, Nataline died.

While visiting family in Tennessee, Potter stopped at a “medical expedition” in Wise, Va. People drove hours for free care from temporary clinics set up in animal stalls at the local fairground. Potter told me that weeks later, flying on a CIGNA corporate jet with the CEO: “I realized that someone’s premiums were helping me to travel that way … paying for my lunch on gold-trimmed china. I thought about those men and women I had seen in Wise County … not having any idea [how] insurance executives lived.” He decided he couldn’t be an industry PR hack anymore.

Insurance executives and their Wall Street investors are addicted to massive profits and double-digit annual rate increases. To squeeze more profit, Potter says, if a person makes a major claim for coverage, the insurer will often scrutinize the person’s original application, looking for any error that would allow it to cancel the policy. Likewise, if a small company’s employees make too many claims, the insurer, Potter says, “very likely will jack up the rates so much that your employer has no alternative but to leave you and your co-workers without insurance.”

This week, as the House and Senate introduce their health care bills, Potter warns, “One thing to remember is that the health insurance industry has been anticipating this debate on health care for many years … they’ve been positioning themselves to get very close to influential members of Congress in both parties.” Montana Sen. Max Baucus chairs the Senate Finance Committee, key for health care reform. Potter went on, “[T]he insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry and others in health care have donated … millions of dollars to his campaigns over the past few years. But aside from money, it’s relationships that count … the insurance industry has hired scores and scores of lobbyists, many of whom have worked for members of Congress, and some who are former members of Congress.”

The insurance industry and other health care interests are lobbying hard against a government-sponsored, nonprofit, public health insurance option, and are spending, according to The Washington Post, up to $1.4 million per day to sway Congress and public opinion.

Don’t be fooled. Profit-driven insurance claim denials actually kill people, and Wendell Potter knows where the bodies are buried. His whistle-blowing may be just what’s needed to dump what’s sick in our health care system.

Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 750 stations in North America. She is the co-author of “Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times,” recently released in paperback.

Going for the Gold

The Redistributive Agenda behind Market-Based Health Care Reform

By Robert G. Evans.
Journal of Health Politics
Vol. 22. No. 2, April 1997

Click here to download the pdf.

Abstract

Political conflict over the respective roles of the state and the market in health care has a long history. Current interest in market approaches represents the resurgence of ideas and arguments that have been promoted with varying intensity throughout this century. (In practice, advocates have never wanted a truly competitive market, but rather one managed by and for particular private interests.) Yet international experience over the last forty years has demonstrated that greater reliance on the market is associated with inferior system performance–inequity, inefficiency, high cost, and public dissatisfaction. The United States is the leading example. So why is this issue back again? Because market mechanisms yield distributional advantages for particular influential groups. (1) A more costly health care system yields higher prices and incomes for suppliers–physicians, drug companies, and private insurers. (2) Private payment distributes overall system costs according to use (or expected use) of services, costing wealthier and healthier people less than finance from (income-related) taxation. (3) Wealthy and unhealthy people can purchase (real or perceived) better access or quality for themselves, without having to support a similar standard for others. Thus there is, and always has been, a natural alliance of economic interest between service providers and upper-income citizens to support shifting health financing from public to private sources. Analytic arguments for the potential superiority of hypothetical competitive markets are simply one of the rhetorical forms through which this permanent conflict of economic interest is expressed in political debate.

“Going for the Gold: The Redistributive Agenda behind Market-based Health Care Reform,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, Vol. 22. No. 2, April 1997.

Click here to download the pdf.

For-profit industry is killing U.S. system

Letter to the Editor
Honolulu Advertiser
July 15, 2009

Health care

President Obama has said he wants health care reform that does three things: reduces costs, ensures free choice of providers for patients and ensures universal access. He also said we need to “build on what works” in health care and, “If you’re happy with the insurance you have, you can keep it.”

However, the only ones who are happy with their health insurance these days are the ones who have not had to use theirs recently. If Obama really wants to know what is not working, he should spend an hour reading some of the thousands of “Health Care Stories for America” submitted to his own Web site. They add up to a devastating indictment of the health insurance industry. The for-profit health insurance industry is not “what works,” it is the cancer that is killing U.S. health care and driving its cost into the stratosphere.
The only reform that will actually achieve Obama’s goals of reduced cost, free choice and universal access is more than just a “public option,” it is single-payer public financing of private care delivery and elimination of the U.S. health insurance industry.

Stephen Kemble, MD
Honolulu

Consider single-payer

Letter to the editor
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
July 14, 2009

People who believe a public option will make health insurance companies and health maintenance organizations more accountable should look at Medicare’s Part C Medicare Advantage privatization option. Forbes found insurance companies and HMOs cherry-picking healthy seniors for their plans and lemon-dropping sickly seniors into Medicare Parts A and B.

One goal of health insurance reform should be to broaden the pool to spread and reduce risk. By insuring everyone, single-payer health insurance would be the largest possible insurance pool. No more slicing and dicing of Americans into market shares: middle class (health insurance companies and HMOs), uninsured (potential public option enrollees), old (Medicare), poor (Medicaid), etc.

The naysayers say there is little support for single-payer health insurance, but no Republican probably will campaign to abolish Medicare Parts A and B (single-payer health insurance for seniors) in the 2010 midterm election. The health care sector contributed $167 million to candidates in last year’s election. Congress and President Barack Obama should overcome their addictions to campaign contributions and pass and enact S. 703 and H.R. 676 to ensure every American good, affordable health care and the freedom to choose our doctors.

Daniel Lee
Milwaukee

Action Alert: Support the single-payer amendment

From PNHP

July 15, 2009

Dear Colleagues,

PNHP has learned that as early as this Friday or Monday (July 17 or 20), Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) will introduce, in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, an amendment to the so-called Tri-Committee health care bill. The amendment would replace the private health insurance industry with a single-payer national health insurance program.

In effect, the Weiner amendment would substitute Rep. John Conyers’ (D-Mich.) single-payer bill, H.R. 676, for the proposed Tri-Committee legislation.

The vote on the amendment will take place the same day it is offered – again, most likely this Friday or Monday.

If your representative is a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, please call your congressperson today and ask that he or she support Rep. Weiner’s single-payer amendment. A list of Committee members can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/dhxq65

The Congressional Switchboard can be reached toll-free at 800-473-6711.

If your representative is not a member of the Committee, please call Committee Chair Henry Waxman at 202-225-3976 and ask him to support Weiner’s single-payer amendment.

This important legislative initiative was inspired in part by Rep. Weiner’s meeting with Dr. Quentin Young of PNHP at the time of Dr. Young’s testimony in support of single payer before the House Ways and Means Committee in June. It is also a reflection of the grassroots demand that single payer be on the table in Congress.
Please call today.

Cordially,

Ida Hellander, M.D.
Executive Director

Mark Almberg
Communications Director