That money, between $10 million and $20 million, came from Aetna, Cigna, Humana, Kaiser Foundation Health Plans, UnitedHealth Group and Wellpoint, according to two health care lobbyists familiar with the transactions. The companies are all members of the powerful trade group America\u2019s Health Insurance Plans.<\/span> The funds were solicited by AHIP and funneled to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to help underwrite tens of millions of dollars of television ads by two business coalitions set up and subsidized by the chamber. Each insurer kicked in at least $1 million and some gave multi-million dollar donations\u2026<\/font><\/p>\n …The industry\u2019s covert ad campaign isn\u2019t the industry\u2019s only means of wasting millions of premium dollars on sabotaging reform. As former health insurance executive Wendell Potter told ThinkProgress, insurers are using a variety of front groups to advance a hidden attack campaign. The industry regularly feeds talking points to right-wing media like Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, mobilizes anti-reform \u201cgrassroots\u201d groups and coordinates with conservative think-tanks to produce academic-appearing reports to advance their cause\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n Inserted from <Think Progress<\/a>><\/p>\n You have not heard much from me in the subject of health care reform, because I\u2019m waiting for something substantive to discuss. I don\u2019t want to jump at every rumor and innuendo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is something we knew, but it\u2019s excellent confirmation. Last September, ThinkProgress reported that, despite its public support for health care reform, the insurance industry was engaged in a \u201cduplicitous\u201d campaign to undermine the effort. Now the National Journal has confirmed that from September to December 2009, \u201csix of the nation\u2019s biggest health insurers began […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Insurance](\"http:\/\/s217.photobucket.com\/albums\/cc83\/TomCat1948or2\/Blog%202010\/J-M\/TheDuplicityofBigHealthCare_1DB1\/Insurancegreed2.jpg\" "\\"Insurance")
<\/a> Last September, ThinkProgress reported that, despite its public support for health care reform, the insurance industry was engaged in a \u201cduplicitous\u201d campaign to undermine the effort. Now the National Journal<\/font> has confirmed<\/a> that from September to December 2009, \u201csix of the nation\u2019s biggest health insurers began<\/font> quietly pumping big money into third-party television ads<\/a> aimed at killing or significantly modifying the major health reform bills moving through Congress.\u201d The companies used America\u2019s Health Insurance Plans \u2014 the lobbying arm of the insurance industry \u2014 \u201cas a conduit to avoid a repeat of the political flack that hit the insurance industry after it famously ran its multi-million dollar \u2018Harry and Louise\u2019 ads to help kill health care reforms during the Clinton administration\u201d:<\/font><\/p>\n