![How Corporate America Is Pushing Us All Off a Cliff](https://fresnoalliance.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/201012Sicko-202x300-1.jpg)
When someone talks about pushing you off a cliff, itās just human nature to be curious about them. Who are these people, you wonder, and why would they want to do such a thing?
Thatās what I was thinking when corporate whistleblower Wendell Potter revealed that, when Sicko was being released in 2007, the health insurance industryās PR firm, APCO Worldwide, discussed its Plan B: āPushing Michael Moore off a cliff.ā
But after looking into it, it turns out itās nothing personal! APCO wants to push everyone off a cliff.
APCO was hatched in 1984 as a subsidiary of the Washington, D.C., law firm Arnold & Porterābest known for its years of representing the giant tobacco conglomerate Philip Morris. APCO set up fake āgrassrootsā organizations around the country to do the bidding of Big Tobacco. All of a sudden, ānormal, everyday, in-no-way-employed-by-Philip Morris Americansā were popping up everywhere. And it turned out they were outragedāoutraged!āby exactly the things APCOās clients hated (such as the government telling tobacco companies what to do). In particular, they were āfuriousā that regular people had the right to sue big corporations…you know, like Philip Morris. (For details, see the 2000 report āThe CALA Filesā (.pdf) by my friends and colleagues Carl Deal and Joanne Doroshow.)
Right about now you may be wondering: How many Americans get pushed off a cliff by Big Tobacco every year? The answer is 443,000 Americans die every year due to smoking. Thatās a big cliff.
With this success under its belt, APCO created āThe Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC).ā The TASSC, funded partly by Exxon, had a leading role in a planned campaign by the fossil fuel industry to create doubt about global warming. The problem for Big Oil speaking out against global warming, according to the campaignās own leaked documents, was that the public could see the āvested interestā that oil companies had in opposing environmental laws. APCOās job was to help conceal those oil company interests.
And boy, have they ever succeeded. Polls now show that, as the world gets hotter, Americans are getting less and less worried about it.
How big is this particular cliff? According to the World Health Organization, climate change contributesāright nowāto the deaths of 150,000 people every year. By 2030, it may be double that. And after that…well, the sky is literally the limit! I donāt think itās crazy to say APCO may rack up even bigger numbers here than it has with tobacco.
With this track record, you can see why, when the health insurance industry wanted to come after Sicko, it went straight to APCO. The āworst case,ā as its leaked documents say, was that āSicko evolves into a sustained populist movement.ā That simply could not be allowed to happen. Something obviously had to be done.
As Potter explains, APCO ran its standard playbook, setting up something called āHealth Care America.ā Health Care America, according to Potter, āwas received by mainstream reporters, including the New York Times, as a legitimate organization when it was nothing but a front group set up by APCO Worldwide. It was not anything approaching what it was reporting to be: a āgrassroots organization.ā It was a sham group.ā
Health Care America showed up online in 2007 (the year Sicko was released) and disappeared quickly by early 2008. You can still find its Web site archived here at http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.healthcare-america.org/. As youāll see, Health Care Americaās āmoderated forumā allowed normal, everyday, in-no-way-employed-by-the-insurance-industry Americans to speak out. For instance, hereās something Nicole felt very strongly about:
āMoore shouldnāt be allowed to call his film a ādocumentary.ā It should be called a political commercial. We need to fix our health care system, but we shouldnāt accept a Hollywood moviemakerās political views as the starting point.ā
Hereās what Potter revealed about the insurance industryās media strategy:
āAs we would do the media training, we would always have someone refer to him as āHollywood entertainerā or āHollywood moviemaker Michael Moore.ā They donāt want you to think that it was a documentary that had some truth.ā
Thanks for your perspective, āNicoleā!
Now, how big was that cliff? A pretty good size; according to a recent study, 45,000 Americans die every year because they donāt have health insurance.
And here we are in 2010. A lesser PR firm might be resting on its laurels at this point, content to sit back and watch hundreds of thousands of people continue to be pushed off the various cliffs theyāve built. But not APCO! Right now, it has taken on its biggest challenge yet: leading a giant, multimillion dollar effort to help Wall Street āearn back the trust of the American people.ā
We may never know the size of this particular cliff. But we can be sure itās gigantic. According to the New York Times, one of the things Wall Streetās recession gave us is āthe crippling of the government program that provides life-sustaining antiretroviral drugs to Americans with H.I.V. or AIDS who cannot afford them.ā Internationally, organizations fighting AIDS and other diseases are āhugely afraidā of cutbacks in funding.
Of course, there are the 101 ways recessions kill quietly. For instance, childrenās hospitals are seeing a sharp 55% rise in the abuse of babies by parents.
And thatās just the previous cliff. If APCO and its Wall Street co-conspirators lull us into turning our backs on them again, we can be sure the next cliffāthe next crashāwill be much bigger.
Anyway, this is all just a way for me to say to APCO: No hard feelings! My getting mad at you would be like a chicken whoās still happily pecking away getting mad at McDonaldās. Compared to the millions youāve already turned into McNuggets, youāve actually treated me much, much better! Spying on my family, planting smears and lies about me, privately badgering movie critics to give the film a poor review, scaring Americans into believing theyād be committing a near-act of treason were they to go to the theater and see my movieāhey, ya done good, health insurance companies of America. And, most important, you stopped the nation from getting true universal health care. Good job!
Thereās only one problemāIām not one of those āliberalsā you fund in Congress, the ones who fear your power.
Iām me. And that, sadly, is not good for you.