A former health insurance executive criticized South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg for his time at consulting firm McKinsey & Co. and his work with a medical care provider, accusing the top-tier presidential candidate of using health insurance industry talking points against more progressive health care policy.
“He’s absolutely using the talking points that I used to create in my old job and my former colleagues are still turning out,” Wendell Potter, who spent 20 years in the health insurance industry, told Hill.TV during an interview that aired on Tuesday.
Potter pointed to Buttigieg’s recent jab at rivals Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) as a prime example. Though he didn’t mention them by name, the South Bend, Ind., mayor suggested in an MSNBC interview earlier this month that the two progressive candidates were calling for a health care policy that “would eliminate the job of every single American working at every single insurance company in the country.”
“In my old job in the industry, I used to play the jobs card too and I call it that because every time reform is proposed that insurance companies don’t like they say, ‘Oh, they’ll have to lay people off,’” he said, referring to Buttigieg’s claim. “It’s called playing the jobs card and he’s doing that.”
Buttigieg campaign spokesperson Sean Savett pushed back against Potter’s remarks, saying his claim that Buttigieg is parroting industry talking points “doesn’t hold up.”
“Pete’s ‘Medicare for All Who Want It’ plan would make some of the boldest, most progressive changes to our health care system in decades in order to achieve universal coverage for all Americans,” Savett said in a statement. “It has also been attacked by the health insurance industry because it would create competition and force insurers to lower costs and improve care or lose customers.”
Sanders and Warren have been advocating for a “Medicare for All” plan that would ultimately do away with private insurance.
Getting rid of private insurance has been a point of contention between these progressive candidates and moderate candidates like Buttigieg and former Vice President Joe Biden, who have both advocated for expanding existing health care coverage and adding a public option plan.
Buttigieg, meanwhile, has defended his work at the insurance company where he previously worked as a consultant, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and maintained that he wasn’t involved in the decision-making process at McKinsey. His campaign has also noted that the mayor has been critical of his former employer, calling its work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement “disgusting.”
Buttigieg, who has made it to the top of the polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, has faced increasing scrutiny from critics, who argue that he hasn’t been forthcoming about his past work.
A feud has emerged between Buttigieg and Warren after the Massachusetts senator called on him to make his fundraisers public and disclose his past clients at McKinsey. In an effort to address this criticism, the South Bend, Ind. Mayor has since acceded to both demands.
However, Buttigieg’s campaign left out more than 20 high-profile fundraisers from a list of bundlers it released earlier this month, potentially opening his campaign for more attacks over the issue of transparency.
—Tess Bonn
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