Here are a few of the strongest and most unwavering challengers to the motives healthcare industry. Most are fierce advocates of single-payer health care, both in the U.S. and Canada.

Wendell Potter

Potter worked for Cigna and other health insurers for decades and finally quit the industry due to what he calls the industry ‘dumping the sick’ in the name of profits for investors. He was involved in public relations for these companies, essentially working to ensure their image was not spoiled by reality. He has since become a tireless whistleblower of the industry – giving the public unique access to what the health insurance companies are really up to.

(video) “They Dump the Sick to Satisfy Investors”: Wendell Potter Speaks Out Against Healthcare Industry

The idea for this website came after watching this video. Potter discusses how the insurance industry will do anything to keep single-payer off the agenda: “the game plan is based on scare tactics. And, of course, the thing they fear most is that the country will at some point gravitate toward a single-payer plan. That’s the ultimate fear that they have.” (Democracy Now!, July 16, 2009) watch video…

(video) Wendell Potter on Bill Moyers Journal

Potter speaks with Bill Moyers about how those companies are standing in the way of health care reform. (PBS, July 10th, 2009) watch video…

Rally Against Wall Street’s Health Care Takeover

Excellent overview from Potter of how health insurance public relations has worked over the past 15 years. (PR Watch,  August 31st, 2009) read more…

Warning: Co-op Kool Aid Is Bad for Your Health – Potter on Senate Finance Committee plans

“the Gang of Six is a group of three Democrats and three Republicans hand-picked by Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus, who is one of the three Democrats. The gang meets often, supposedly drafting a bipartisan bill. In reality, if such a bill emerges, it will be a gift to the insurance industry because the gang includes some of the industry’s best friends on Capitol Hill.” (Commondreams, August 22nd, 2009) read more…

Whistleblower: Here’s how the health insurance industry plans to block reform

Shawn Doherty, (The Capital Times, September 5th, 2009) read more…

Russell Mokhiber

Russell Mokhiber is a Washington D.C. investigative reporter and lawyer who founded the group Single Payer Action. He is also the editor of the Corporate Crime Reporter.

How Bad Is Health Care Fraud?

Health care fraud could be as high as 20 percent of all health care expenditures. Or even 30 percent. That would be $400 billion. Or $600 billion. (Corporate Crime Reporter, September 14th, 2009) read more…

In Defense of Disruption: Hit the Reset Button on Health Care

What do: Rush Limbaugh, Barack Obama, Newt Gingrich, Nancy Pelosi, PhRMA, Families USA, America’s Health Insurance Plans, AARP, Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell and Fox News have in common? They are all freaked out by single payer. (Counterpunch, August 10th, 2009) read more…

Boycott Whole Foods: John Mackey’s Campaign Against Single-Payer

Today, we are calling on all American citizens to boycott Whole Foods. Why? Because Mackey has launched a public campaign to defeat single payer national health insurance. This despite the bottom line reality that single payer is the only way to both control health care costs and cover everyone. (Counterpunch, August 13th, 2009) read more…

Michael Rachlis

Rachlis is a Canadian doctor who is a frequent media commentator on health policy issues and the author of three national bestsellers about Canada’s health care system, including Prescription for Excellence: How Innovation is Saving Canada’s Health Care System

A Canadian doctor diagnoses U.S. healthcare.

The caricature of ’socialized medicine’ is used by corporate interests to confuse Americans and maintain their bottom lines instead of patients’ health. (L.A. Times, August 3rd, 2009) read more…

(video) Universal Healthcare Debate

This is Michael Rachlis’ part in a U.S. debate on universal health care at Intelligence Squared. There were 3 supporters in the debate and 3 against. The entirety of the debate is also available from this page. (Intelligence Squared, September 16th, 2008) watch video…

Peter Dreier

Dreier is a professor of politics, and director of the Urban & Environmental Policy Program, at Occidental College in Los Angeles and has been writing some of the best articles this year looking at the health care lobby.

We Have the Hope. Now Where’s the Audacity?

Kennedy passed the liberal torch to Obama. Let’s run with it. (Washington Post, August 30, 2009) read more…

Turn Up the Heat on the Insurance Industry

Few Americans know the names of the nation’s largest health insurance companies or their CEOs. That has to change, quickly. (Huffington Post, August 23, 2009) read more…

Is Max Baucus the New Phil Gramm?

Senator Phil Gramm, the Texas Republican, was a free market zealot who was more responsible than any other politician for the mortgage meltdown that led to the epidemic of foreclosures and the current economic recession. Now Senator Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat, is playing a similar role in the battle over health care reform. (TPM, August 15th, 2009) read more…

Dr. Quentin Young

National Coordinator for Physicians for a National Health Program., longtime Obama Confidante and Physician to MLK.

(video) Dr. Quentin Young Criticizes Admin’s Rejection of Single-Payer Healthcare

“It’s one of the few times when Barack has been dishonest. He knows and all America knows that our experience with employment-based insurance and these other Mickey Mouse things have been increasingly a total disaster. You have a $2.5 trillion industry with vested interests—the private hospitals that are for profit, the HMOs, the health insurance industry—making billions upon billions, and things getting worse. He knows and should act on the fact that time is running out.” (Democracy Now! March 11th, 2009) watch video…

Ralph Nader

Ralph Nader is one of America’s most effective social critics. His documented criticism of government and industry has had widespread effect on public awareness and bureaucratic power.

The Drive for Single Payer

After several weeks of protests at Senate hearings and health care events by single payer advocates (visit singlepayeraction.org), six physicians from Oregon, with 191 years of combined real-world medical experience, are crossing the country in a 27-foot Winnebago making stops in nearly 30 cities, to debate, educate and advance full medicare for all. Everybody in, nobody out. (Commondreams, September 1st, 2009) read more…

(video) “You Do Not Cut Deals with the System that Has to Be Replaced”: Ralph Nader on Secret White House Agreements with the Drug Industry

What is emerging here is what was being planned by the Obama White House all along, which is they would only—they would only demand legislation that was accepted by the big drug companies and the big health insurance companies.You can see this emerging over the last few months. President Obama has met with the heads of the drug companies and the health insurance companies. Some executives have met with President Obama four to five times in the White House in the last few months. He has never met with the longtime leaders of the “Full Medicare for Everybody” movement… (Democracy Now!, August 14th, 2009)  watch video…

(video) Ralph Nader on Single-Payer
Ralph Nader speaks in Kentville, California about Single-Payer Health Insurance and how it saves lives and money. (August 3, 2008) watch video

Amy Goodman

Amy Goodman is the host of Democracy Now! The War and Peace Report, a dedicated advocate of the truth, and highly praied investigative journalist.

Health Care Reform Needs an Action Hero

Actor Kiefer Sutherland’s family has very deep connections to health care reform–in Canada. Sutherland is the grandson of the late Tommy Douglas, the pioneering Canadian politician who is credited with creating the modern Canadian health care system. (Z Net, August 13th, 2009) read more…

“Health Insurance Whistle-Blower Knows Where the Bodies Are Buried”

Wendell Potter is the health insurance industry’s worst nightmare. He’s a whistle-blower. (Truth Dig, July 14, 2009) read more…

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