Exclusive: Attacks On Health Reform Orchestrated By Yet Another Shadowy Corporate Front Group — ‘CMPI’
Exclusive: Attacks On Health Reform Orchestrated By Yet Another Shadowy Corporate Front Group — ‘CMPI’
The resistance to reforming our nation’s healthcare system has been fueled by entrenched corporate interests. Their deep pockets are funneling money into generating attack ads, funding lawmakers’ campaigns, and hiring lobbyists. These corporate interests are also funding various front groups to make up their own facts and scare the public.
Among the latest corporate front groups orchestrating a campaign of misinformation against health reform, ThinkProgress has learned, is an outfit called the “Center for Medicine in the Public Interest” (CMPI). CMPI was originally a project of the Pacific Research Institute, an older corporate front established in conjunction with Philip Morris to fabricate academic support for the tobacco industry. Some of CMPI’s recent attacks on health reform have included:
– CMPI produced a series of “US Policymaker” interviews about health reform featuring exclusively Republican lawmakers — such as Reps. Louie Gohmert (TX), Bob Inglis (SC), Jack Kingston (SC), Tom Price (GA), Joe Wilson (SC), Michele Bachmann (MN), Paul Ryan (WI); Sens. Jim DeMint (SC), Jim Bunning (KY), David Vitter (LA) — attacking health reform. CMPI also produced a series of videos mocking health reform and the public option.
– CMPI created various video games distorting health reform. They serve as gimmicks to recruit users to sign up for CMPI’s daily anti-reform talking points.
– CMPI launched a website called “Hands off my Health” showcasing the supposed horrors of universal healthcare programs in Canada and the UK. CMPI officials centered a media campaign around Shona Robertson-Holmes, claiming she had a brain tumor the Canadian system refused to treat. However, the Ottawa Citizen reported that CMPI has been exaggerating Holmes’ case, and that she in fact had a benign cyst.
– CMPI helped sponsor anti-Obama tea party protests.
– CMPI has subcontracted GOP consulting firm Political Media to develop a blizzard of online ads attacking health reform. In the weeks preceding the House vote on reform legislation, CMPI ran ads on sites like the Politico, DrudgeReport, WashingtonPost.com, WashingtonTimes.com with an animated sheep stating that the public option is a “baaaaaad idea.” CMPI plans to run many more ads as the Senate begins debate.
The head of CMPI, Peter Pitts — a former Bush administration FDA communications official and director of marketing at the Washington Times — has a long history of using his CMPI title to hawk the interests of corporate clients. The Bioethics Forum has noted that CMPI, which receives drug company money, aggressively defends almost any practice of the pharmaceutical industry. For instance, as Slate reported, Pitts appeared on an NPR special to downplay fears about the side effects of antidepressants like Prozac, but failed to disclose his position as a VP of the PR firm Manning Selvage & Lee, which at the time represented Eli Lilly Inc. (the maker of Prozac), GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer.
In March of this year, Pitts became the head of international corporate PR firm Porter Novelli’s healthcare division. Despite the fact that CMPI’s latest 990 tax form states that Pitts spends 40 hours a week at CMPI, a representative from Porter Novelli told ThinkProgress that Pitts actually works on a day to day basis in his office at Porter Novelli. Asked about how the firm engages in the health reform debate, ThinkProgress was told by Porter Novelli that Pitts is “pretty much our voice.” Porter Novelli specializes in using social networking and other stealth marketing techniques to help drug companies avoid FDA regulations on marketing pharmaceutical products. Since Pitts joined Porter Novelli, CMPI has continued to shill for drug companies.
Although CMPI refused to tell ThinkProgress about its funders, Pitt’s firm Porter Novelli has a financial stake in blocking reform. Porter Novelli is a subsidiary of the global lobbying and communications giant Omnicom Group. Other Omnicom Group subsidiaries include Frank Luntz’s firm Luntz, Maslansky Strategic Research — which counts insurance companies like Blue Cross Blue Shield and the Health Insurance Plans of New York as clients — and Clark and Weinstock, a major lobbying firm representing healthcare clients like the health insurance company HealthNet.
Porter Novelli has also created front groups for the insurance industry in the past. In 1998, Porter Novelli managed the insurance industry’s “Health Benefits Coalition” group to kill the Patients Bill of Rights. As former insider Wendell Potter explained, Porter Novelli helped the industry form alliances with right-wing groups like the Family Research Council, the Christian Coalition, as well as conservative talk radio. Similar to how CMPI is currently working closely with tea party groups to attack “big government healthcare,” Porter Novelli developed a message that the Patients Bill of Rights was part of a “big government agenda” the “Democrat” party failed to pass 1994.
CMPI is among a constellation of mysterious corporate front groups attacking reform. As the Associated Press reported over the weekend, a secretive group called Americans for Quality and Affordable Healthcare has operatives placing anti-health reform columns, booking anti-reform pundits on talk radio, and organizing anti-reform panel discussions. AQAH also refuses to disclose its backers, but it is apparently being managed in part by the North Carolina law firm Moore & Van Allen.
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Thanks to TP and other progressive media and Keith and Rachel, these groups are being exposed. People now know who Dick Armey and all these other dirt-bags are. They once conducted business in the shadows, now they are being dragged into the light. Good work.
November 18th, 2009 at 1:20 pmSigh. Yet another group claiming to be speaking for the “public interest” when are anything but.
I suppose that calling themselves the “Center for Maintaining the Gravy Train to Bloodsucking Greedheads at the Expense of the Public” wouldn’t market as well.
November 18th, 2009 at 1:21 pmEver notice how some people really look like their names?
November 18th, 2009 at 1:23 pmDontcha just love these massive lobbying fronts with Orwellian sounding names? This group could not be operating further from the public interest.
November 18th, 2009 at 1:24 pm.
I said it long ago, I remember the days when Congress listen to PAID advice on trumped up false science arguments constructed so as to coerce Congress into believing a bigger lie. And I said at the time that times have not changes, only the rhetoric and subject matter has.
There are people in this world, nea, in this Nation, who PROFIT from lying, PROFIT from those that are dying. My bigger question has always been, what does that make CONgress when they are CONNED into believing the lies?
Wanda Sykes on health care…
http://vodpod.com/watch/2519246-wanda-sykes-takes-on-obama-care-fear-mongers
… And it ain’t no joke.
.
November 18th, 2009 at 1:28 pm“Center for Medicine in the Profits Interest”?
Much more appropriate name than the lie they chose.
November 18th, 2009 at 1:29 pmDarn video won’t play…
… Original at C&L.
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/cspanjunkie/wanda-sykes-takes-obama-care-fear-mong
.
November 18th, 2009 at 1:35 pmI worked in sales for a short time, and one of the things I learned from that experience is that if you have to lie or misrepresent yourself or your product to make a sale, there’s probably something wrong with what you’re selling.
There’s something terribly wrong with what CMPI is selling. Don’t they know this? Or do they know and just don’t care because they have long ago sold their souls for money? I’m betting on the latter.
November 18th, 2009 at 1:39 pmWhat part of “Republicans are the Enemy Within” do people not get?
November 18th, 2009 at 1:46 pmYou know it wouldn’t be so bad what these shadowy corporate fronts were doing if they would just have honest names like:
D.T.A.C.
Death To American Citizens
November 18th, 2009 at 1:52 pmBuckie, remember when the red scare was the big thing and the fear was that they would defeat us from within?
Guess the people hollering that were trying to keep us from paying attention to what they were doing.
November 18th, 2009 at 1:53 pmIf interested, see this site re CMPI and it practice and pattern: http://www.thehastingscenter.org/Bioethicsforum/Post.aspx?id=1596
November 18th, 2009 at 1:56 pm11. Fred and Buckie,
And may I add that the fearmongers introduce some worthless action but promote it as a talisman that makes everything OK.
Remember Duck and Cover (and how we felt so much better for jumping under our desks to shield us from nuclear instant vaporization).
More recently, Duct Tape and Plastic.
November 18th, 2009 at 1:58 pmOh should have added, the security screenings at airports where if a bottle is suspected of harboring too much terrorist water, it is tossed in a can with other suspicious bottles – (as opposed to if you think it is a bomb, you keep it away from other bombs).
And don’t even start on the no-fly list, and the immigration terrorist watch list.
November 18th, 2009 at 2:00 pm.
Michael Moore on Health Care bill…
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-in-the-news/michael-moore-warns-canadians-stand-guard-against-creating-two-canadas
.
November 18th, 2009 at 2:02 pmIn related news, those w/o insurance are more likely to die from their traumatic injuries in the ER than those with insurance
November 18th, 2009 at 2:06 pmIf all these special interest groups that are resisting change to the health insurance system would only turn their energies to helping out those who are in need of access to health care, then there wouldn’t be a problem in the first place.
They claim that they recognize there is a problem, but they have no solutions and they resist any change at all.
Blinded by profit and control.
November 18th, 2009 at 2:20 pmThese front groups have enjoyed a tax exempt status far too long. The argument that to tax these organizations would stifle free speech is ludicrous. This is instead “paid speech” that, in most cases, works against the common good. Any organized lobbying group should be precluded from utilizing any tax exemptions.
November 18th, 2009 at 2:25 pmHmmm,
November 18th, 2009 at 2:48 pmI’m guessing that they are also fronting the ‘Employment Policy Institute’, which is currently running disparaging ads on radio in my region, lying through their teeth about health care reform.
– CMPI created various video games distorting health reform. They serve as gimmicks to recruit users to sign up for CMPI’s daily anti-reform talking points.
Oh, is that where the game ‘Watch Mommy die of breast Cancer II’ came from?
November 18th, 2009 at 3:02 pmOne of these days someone is going to take out an insurance company CEO and millions of Americans will privately applaud.
November 18th, 2009 at 3:08 pmMSNBC has reported that opponents of health care reform are outspending the pro-reform groups by a 2 to 1 margin. The biggest obstacle to these anti-reform groups is the fact that people are now in the benefits selection process. These consumers are looking at their health care premiums and they are not happy.
November 18th, 2009 at 3:14 pmSo what
November 18th, 2009 at 4:21 pmMr.Duke says:
So what
Abstract reasoning must hurt your brain.
November 18th, 2009 at 4:50 pmwow… only 24 comments for this “exclusive” story…
is it that unexpected, that un-surprising…?
outrage fatigue…?
…
the money spent fighting against the common good is what amazes me…
November 18th, 2009 at 8:56 pmIsn’t it NPR’s job to disclose its guests affiliations? Did NPR not know?
November 19th, 2009 at 12:08 am