Ep. 134: The 80-Year PR Campaign that Killed Universal Healthcare

Almost every wealthy country in the world has some type of universal healthcare system--except for the United States. With over 170 million of its citizens left to fend for themselves in a sprawling and complex maze of Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance, tax credits, child care subsidies, co-pays, deductibles and cost-sharing, the U.S. has not only the largest uninsured population, but also the most expensive system on Earth per capita.

Why America doesn’t have a universal healthcare system has historically been explained away with a reductionist mix of pathologizing and circular reasoning. "America hates big government," "we love choice," "Americans distrust anything that reeks of socialism." And while this is true in some limited sense, it avoids the bigger question of why has American so-called "democracy" rejected the numerous proposals to enact a single payer or other forms of universal healthcare?

While there may be some innate Protestant work ethic or rugged individualistic mentality at work here, there’s also been a decades-long multimillion dollar campaign funded by big business, doctor, pharmaceutical and hospital industry interests, and the insurance industry to convince the public to reject universal public healthcare. Indeed, if Americans were somehow intractably opposed to the notion––if they were hardwired to reject socialized medicine––these forces would never have had to spend so much money in the first place.

On this episode, we explore the 80-year long campaign by capital to convince you to not support universal health programs, how these campaigns have historically fear-mongered against Communists, immigrants and African Americans, who benefits from a precarious, employer-controlled healthcare insurance system, and how this propaganda war on the American mind is anything but over.

Our guest is Ben Palmquist, Director of the Health Care and Economic Democracy Program at Partners for Dignity and Rights.

**

Guest

Ben Palmquist is the Health Care and Economic Democracy Program Director at Partners for Dignity and Rights. His work has been featured in publications such as In These Times, Jacobin, the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics and The Progressive. He is the author of the report, “Parroting the Right: How Media and Polling Company Adoption of Insurance Industry Spin Warps Democracy.”

***

Show Notes

Parroting the Right: How Media and Polling Company Adoption of Insurance Industry Spin Warps Democracy

Ben Palmquist | June 14, 2019 | Partners for Dignity & Rights

The Lie Factory

Jill Lepore | September 17, 2012 | The New Yorker

Why Doesn’t America Have Universal Health Care? One Word: Race

Jeneen Interlandi | August 14, 2019 | The New York Times

A Political Opening for Universal Health Care?

Vann R. Newkirk II | February 14, 2017 | The Atlantic

The Socialist Who Won a Democratic Primary and the Dirty Hollywood Politics That Sunk His Campaign

Zelda Roland | April 28, 2016 | KCET

The Language of Healthcare: The 10 Rules For Stopping the “Washington Takeover” of Healthcare

Frank Luntz | 2009

USA Today’s ‘Sicko’ Debate

June 29, 2007 | FAIR

Big Pharma Readies Effort To Counter Moore's 'Sicko'

Elizabeth Solomont | June 20, 2007 | The New York Sun

Thinking About the Government

Geoffrey Nunberg | April 19, 2005 | The American Prospect

The California Single-Payer Debate, The Defeat of Proposition 186

July 30, 1995 | Kaiser Family Foundation

Political Memo; G.O.P. on Health Care: Seeking a Second Opinion

Robin Toner | March 4, 1994 | The New York Times

Defeating President Clinton's Health Care Proposal

Bill Kristol | December 2, 1993 | Project for the Republican Future

How Media Politics Was Born

Greg Mitchell | September/October 1988 | American Heritage

‘Mank’ and Politics: What Really Happened in 1934 California 

Greg Mitchell | December 7, 2020 | The New York Times

****

Resources

Campaigns, Inc.

Curation of physical exhibit by Lisa Prince, Jeff Crawford, Kira Dres, Chris Garmire, Veronica Lara, Sebastian Nelson, and Paul Rendes, with assistance from Juan Ramos (2015-2016)

Digital adaptation by Jessica Herrick (2016)

Imaging by Brian Guido, Thaddeus McCurry, Jessica Herrick, and Lisa Prince

Motion picture film digitization by Chris Garmire, made possible by the California Audio-Visual Preservation Project

“Harry and Louise” Health Care Advertisements

July 10, 1994 | C-SPAN

*****

Transcript

You can find a full transcript of this episode here.

******