health care disinformation campaign

[kkt]

I don't want to distract from roads further in a road-related topic, so I'm posting a link and brief summary here.  The guest, Wendell Potter, worked in PR for the U.S. health insurance industry association for a long time, creating disinformation campaigns about single-payer plans.  Yes, this particular article is about trashing Canadian health care, not European.  I won't quote the whole article, just a few paragraphs, but there's more there about specific propaganda techniques if you want to follow the link.

https://www.npr.org/2020/11/06/931990578/why-americans-have-been-deceived-about-canadas-health-care-system

Why Americans Have Been Deceived About Canada's Health Care System

November 6, 2020 5:06 AM ET
Heard on Morning Edition
AMANDA ARONCZYK

ARONCZYK: No one asked me. But if they had, I would have told them that none of this matched my experience living in Canada. So I wondered, where are people getting these stories from? And then, this fall, I found the answer - from a man who worked in PR for health insurance companies for over 20 years named Wendell Potter.

WENDELL POTTER: Consistently, Americans view single-payer systems favorably. And that's always scared health insurance company executives. And so that's why you have to have these campaigns, to remind people, no, you don't want that. This is why.

ARONCZYK: Potter told me that it was his job to make Canadian health care sound so bad that no one would even consider its merits.

POTTER: I'm at fault here. The work I'm doing now is to make amends for all of the work that I did to perpetuate those myths about the Canadian system.

ARONCZYK: One of the ways Potter is making amends is by revealing how he smeared an entire health care system. He says there were three main tactics. Tactic No. 1, use anecdotes. Find Canadians who had negative experiences and disseminate their stories widely.

[Rothman]

What the hey...

[Scott5114]

Politics