Wendell Potter: Rally Against Wall Street's Health Care Takeover

http://www.truthout.org/090109T?n

Saturday, August 29, I had the good fortune to speak at a community rally for health care reform in a city park in downtown Portland, Oregon. It was a broad-based and diverse group with many signs and placards supporting the "public option" being debated by Congress, and others calling for "single payer" reform like that working effectively in other countries such as Canada. Here is what I said:

I would like to begin by apologizing to all of you for the role I played 15 years ago in cheating you out of a reformed health care system. Had it not been for greedy insurance companies and other special interests, and their army of lobbyists and spin-doctors like I used to be, we wouldn't be here today.

I'm ashamed that I let myself get caught up in deceitful and dishonest PR campaigns that worked so well, hundreds of thousands of our citizens have died, and millions of others have lost their homes and been forced into bankruptcy, so that a very few corporate executives and their Wall Street masters could become obscenely rich.

But It was only during the last few years of my career that I came to realize the full scope of the harm my colleagues and I had caused, and the lengths that insurance companies will go to increase their profits at the expense of working families.

thanks for your comments, and for leaving behind your errant ways... I'm sure you are a viable and convincing speaker, having seen the corruption from the inside. Please keep on with your efforts. Thanks.

AFAIK, the insurance corporations would have been all for Hillary Care. I don't know what it was ('cause it never had a chance), but I know it wasn't "Medicare for All". The Republicans in 1993 just wanted to stop anything relating to Clinton, they didn't care what it was, how damaging to the economy or how many people had to die for it, as long as they gained political points.

The latter did the Harry and Louise ads, but the former (although they essentially wrote Clinton's legislation) left her twisting in the wind.

He deserves the Teddy award!