Conservatives for Patients' Rights (CPR) is a health care
pressure group
Advocacy groups, also known as interest groups, special interest groups, lobbying groups or pressure groups use various forms of advocacy in order to influence public opinion and ultimately policy. They play an important role in the developm ...
founded by
Rick Scott
Richard Lynn Scott ( Myers, born December 1, 1952) is an American politician serving as the junior United States senator from Florida since 2019. A member of the Republican Party, he was the 45th governor of Florida from 2011 to 2019.
Scott ...
in February 2009. Scott has stated that CPR has an intention of putting pressure on
U.S. Democrats to enact health care legislation based on
free-market
In economics, a free market is an economic system in which the prices of goods and services are determined by supply and demand expressed by sellers and buyers. Such markets, as modeled, operate without the intervention of government or any o ...
principles.
CPR opposes the broad outlines of
President Obama's health care reform plan, and has hired
Creative Response Concepts, a public relations firm which previously worked with the
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
Campaign
Conservatives for Patients' Rights assert themselves as advocates for better health care. Their plan is described as the pillars of health care reform: "choice, competition, accountability and personal responsibility."
[The Plans](_blank)
from the CPR website
The CPR campaign for competition suggests a release of burdensome regulations against private companies in allowance of unfettered competition across the states.
Scott said at that time of the CPR launch, "
henthe government gets involved, you run out of money and health care gets rationed."
Scott has created and starred in a series of commercials advocating against greater government involvement in health care.
CPR-affiliated citizens have protested at town hall meetings on the issue. CPR has provided a list of local town hall meetings discussing the issue, which the group urge their supporters to attend and have provided video footage on how previous people have handled the situation.
Criticism
Some health policy analysts disagree with Scott, who called the Obama plan "
socialized medicine."
In May 2009, the group
Health Care for America Now (HCAN) started broadcasting an advertisement in the Washington, D.C. area and in Scott's home town of Naples, Florida, highlighting a fraud case in which Scott was indicted. HCAN said of Scott: "He and his insurance-company friends make millions from the broken system we have now.".
In August 2009, Katie Brickell and Kate Spall, two British woman who featured in a CPR commercial attacking the
National Health Service
The National Health Service (NHS) is the umbrella term for the publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom (UK). Since 1948, they have been funded out of general taxation. There are three systems which are referred to using the " ...
, said they were "duped" and the commercial misrepresents them because in reality they strongly support state-funded health care. Both told ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' ...
'' newspaper that they had been told they were being interviewed for a documentary examining healthcare reform, and neither knew the footage would be used for such a commercial.
The group was also criticized by economist
Paul Krugman
Paul Robin Krugman ( ; born February 28, 1953) is an American economist, who is Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and a columnist for ''The New York Times''. In 2008, Krugman was t ...
in a ''New York Times'' editorial.
Stephen Barrett
Stephen Joel Barrett (; born 1933) is an American retired psychiatrist, author, co-founder of the National Council Against Health Fraud (NCAHF), and the webmaster of Quackwatch. He runs a number of websites dealing with quackery and health fra ...
, the webmaster of
alternative medicine
Alternative medicine is any practice that aims to achieve the healing effects of medicine despite lacking biological plausibility, testability, repeatability, or evidence from clinical trials. Complementary medicine (CM), complementary and ...
-critical website
Quackwatch
Quackwatch is a United States-based website, self-described as a "network of people" founded by Stephen Barrett, which aims to "combat health-related frauds, myths, fads, fallacies, and misconduct" and to focus on "quackery-related information tha ...
, has criticized the group for its television spots, which it considers "misleading" and "scare tactics", stating: "Together, they claim that current efforts at reform will (a) drive up taxes, (b) stop people from being able to choose their doctors, (c) cause many people to lose their current insurance coverage, and (d) take medical decision-making out of the hands of doctors. All of these messages are misleading".
Barrett also questions Scott's trustworthiness for being entrusted with influence in healthcare system reform, as the latter was involved in the largest case of
Medicare fraud In the United States, Medicare fraud is the claiming of Medicare health care reimbursement to which the claimant is not entitled. There are many different types of Medicare fraud, all of which have the same goal: to collect money from the Medicare ...
and had run-ins with the
Federal Trade Commission, who accused a hospital chain of which he was CEO of anti-competitive misconduct,
and he also invested in a producer of
food supplements
A dietary supplement is a manufactured product intended to supplement one's diet by taking a pill, capsule, tablet, powder, or liquid. A supplement can provide nutrients either extracted from food sources or that are synthetic in orde ...
which Barrett states implies in its advertisement that its products can cure various diseases when such promotion is in fact illegal according to Federal law.
See also
*
Free-market health care
In a system of free-market healthcare, prices for healthcare products and services are set freely by agreement between patients and health care providers, which are subject to the laws and forces of supply and demand and free from any interventio ...
*
Single-payer health care
Single-payer healthcare is a type of universal healthcare in which the costs of essential healthcare for all residents are covered by a single public system (hence "single-payer").
Single-payer systems may contract for healthcare services from ...
*
Universal health care
Universal health care (also called universal health coverage, universal coverage, or universal care) is a health care system in which all residents of a particular country or region are assured access to health care. It is generally organized ar ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Conservatives For Patients' Rights
Political advocacy groups in the United States
Healthcare reform advocacy groups in the United States
2009 establishments in the United States
Organizations established in 2009
Medical and health organizations based in Washington, D.C.
2009 establishments in Washington, D.C.