Wendell Potter's CNN Editorial: How Insurance Firms Drive the Debate

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NOTE: Wendell Potter, the former health insurance PR executive who is now Senior Fellow on Health Care with the Center for Media and Democracy, provided CNN with the follow editorial posted on their website.

(CNN) -- Having grown up in one of the most conservative and Republican places in the country -- East Tennessee -- I understand why many of the people who are showing up at town hall meetings this month are reacting, sometimes violently, when members of Congress try to explain the need for an expanded government role in our health care system.

I also have a lot of conservative friends, including one former co-worker who was laid off by CIGNA several years ago but who nonetheless worries about a "government takeover" of health care.

The most vocal folks at the town hall meetings seem to share the same ideology as my kinfolks in East Tennessee and my former CIGNA buddy: the less government involvement in our lives, the better.

That point couldn't have been made clearer than by the man standing in line to get free care at Remote Area Medical's recent health care "expedition" at the Wise County, Virginia, fairgrounds, who told a reporter he was dead set against President Obama's reform proposal.

Even though he didn't have health insurance, and could see the desperation in the faces of thousands of others all around him who were in similar straits, he was more worried about the possibility of having to pay more taxes than he was eager to make sure he and his neighbors wouldn't have to wait in line to get care provided by volunteer doctors in animal stalls.

Friday morning my former CIGNA buddy sent me an e-mail challenging something he said his wife heard me say in a radio report about my press conference in the Capitol on Wednesday with Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-New York, chairwoman of the House Rules Committee.

"She heard you say that these protestors are funded by the insurance companies. Frankly, nothing would surprise me, but certainly not each and every person," he wrote. "If there was a meeting near me, I certainly would tell my local representative how I feel about this entire subject (and it wouldn't be pretty), and I certainly am not funded by anyone. So I am ultimately wondering what proof there is that seemingly ordinary Americans are finally protesting what is going in Washington and there are all of these suggestions of a greater conspiracy."

If the radio report had carried more of my remarks, he might have a better understanding of how the health insurance and its army of PR people are influencing his opinions and actions without his even knowing it.

Until I quit my job last year, I was one of the leaders of that army. I had a very successful career and was my company's voice to the media and the public for several years.

It was my job to "promote and defend" the company's reputation and to try to persuade reporters to write positive stories about the industry's ideas on reform. During the last couple of years of my career, however, I became increasingly worried that the high-deductible plans insurers were beginning to push Americans into would force more and more of us into bankruptcy.

The higher I rose in the company, the more I learned about the tactics insurers use to dump policyholders when they get sick, in order to increase profits and to reward their Wall Street investors. I could not in good conscience continue serving as an industry mouthpiece. And I did not want to be part of yet another industry effort to kill meaningful reform.

I explained during the press conference with Rep. Slaughter how the industry funnels millions of its policyholders' premiums to big public relations firms that provide talking points to conservative talk show hosts, business groups and politicians. I also described how the PR firms set up front groups, again using your premium dollars and mine, to scare people away from reform.

What I'm trying to do as I write and speak out against the insurance industry I was a part of for nearly two decades is to inform Americans that when they hear isolated stories of long waiting times to see doctors in Canada and allegations that care in other systems is rationed by "government bureaucrats," someone associated with the insurance industry wrote the original script.

The industry has been engaging in these kinds of tactics for many years, going back to its successful behind-the-scenes campaign to kill the Clinton reform plan.

A story in Friday's New York Times about the origin of the absurdly false rumor that President Obama's health care proposal would create government-sponsored "death panels" bears out what I have been saying.

The story notes that the rumor emanated "from many of the same pundits and conservative media outlets that were central in defeating Bill Clinton's health care proposal 16 years ago, including the editorial board of The Washington Times, the American Spectator magazine and Betsy McCaughey, whose 1994 health care critique made her a star of the conservative movement (and ultimately, the lieutenant governor of New York)."

The big PR firms that work for the industry have close connections with those media outlets and stars in the conservative movement. One of their PR firms, which created and staffed a front group in the late '90s to kill the proposed "Patients' Bill of Rights," launched a PR and advertising campaign in conservative media outlets to drum up opposition to the bill.

The message: President Clinton "owed a debt to the liberal base of the Democrat Party and would try to pay back that debt by advancing the type of big government agenda on health care that he failed to get in 1994."

The industry goes to great lengths to keep its involvement in these campaigns hidden from public view. I know from having served on numerous trade group committees and industry-funded front groups, however, that industry leaders are always full partners in developing strategies to derail any reform that might interfere with insurers' ability to increase profits.

So the next time you hear someone warning against a "government takeover" of our health care system, or that the creation of a public health insurance option would send us down the "slippery slope toward socialism," know that someone like I used to be wrote those terms, knowing it might turn many of the very people who would benefit most from meaningful reform into unwitting spokespeople for the industry.

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This blog and the Center's effort, generally...

I think you need to find a way to turn up the volume on your voice.

As a former insider, you do have a voice to add but, unfortunately, you're being out-spent and out-maneuvered.

That said, you must realize the hypocrisy of your actions in the sense that you became far more wealthy despite your knowledge of industry practice. I say that because I think you were smart enough 20 years ago to realize very, very quickly what you were doing, and what the industry was doing.

I think you simply have grown older and wiser since then. Perhaps you stayed to help raise your family and provide for your own retirement. I think you need to be just a notch more honest with those motives as your visibility on this issue rises.

I am glad that you're helping people to comprehend the depth and nature of the industry's efforts to deceive everyone for their own gain.

I hope that your resources from the Center become sufficient to really impact public knowledge, and the debate.

I think that you've found a wonderful way to spend your retirement, and I hope to follow your example someday to change public policy in the areas of employment and equitable trade.

Best regards,
Sam

Thank you, Wendell Potter

Thank you, Wendell Potter, for your voice and experience as part of this national conversation (sometimes screaming match!) about health care. No matter how badly we do at "fixing" the health care system, at least we are talking, though sometimes shouting, about a matter that should have been resolved long ago in this rich country of ours. I appreciate all you are doing, and saying.
Marian Chatfield-Taylor
San Francisco

Wake up people

there is so much wrong with the healthcare industry and trust me when I say most in the industry do no want to change it. i have been doing healthcare 11 years now, i am the person who answers the phone and tries to help you understand how your plan works, what makes me different from most is that i actually understand the benefits and i can usually get a customer to understand them for future. when i say future that is because they don't pay attention to their healthcare benefits till they get that first 1000.00 bill from a provider then it becomes important. the healthcare industry has become like everything else is our country, too large with too many rules and the motto of "it's not my job man". i talk with 100-150 people a day, my issues run the gambit from why do i have to pay 25.00 dollars for a medication that cost 300.00 to why didn't you cover my routine mammogram, oh because the phys did not bill it as routine they billed it as diagnostic, if you don't know what that means that you are not familiar with healthcare and are like millons of others in this country. Nothing is black and white with Healthcare Ins, it is shades of gray, I have worked for a couple of large Health Insurers, they all have different rules generally around the same issues. We have Hipaa, and each insurer has their own interpretation of how privacy applies. The main complaint i get is why don't we cover what my last insurer covered ? I don't know, have you spoken with your employer yet ? No, that is where you need to start. I believe that everyone deserves the right to see a phys or go to a hospital when they need to , or see a dentist or get an eye exam without fear of going bankrupt to do it. And as much as i believe in my president, and i do i just think this issue/giant canker sore is more then his current term and god willing the next term will be able to handle. it took 40 years to get us to where we are now(thanks to the great Satan Reagan and what he started), it will probably take us that long to get us out. SO, i will keep answering the phone and being honest with everyone i speak with probably with risk to my job at times. America needs to wake up and smell the reality see their "Benefits" for what they are, not a entitlement but a privilege and remember, not everyone gets privileges.

Rest assured the rest of the

Rest assured the rest of the World is completely baffled, repulsed by the attitudes you describe. Volunteer medical teams from the UK formed for third world medical relief go to American cities regularly now to help members of the wealthiest nation on Earth. It's fundamentally perverted and disgusting. NOT because of the insurance companies' tactics (we expect nothing less from them) but from your fellow countrypeople who have made this their mission in life to prevent healthcare going to more of their neighbours. I'm guessing there's a special place in the afterlife for people like that when they die.

Wendell Potter is a great American hero

Mr. Potter, thanks for speaking out against the insurance industrys' self-serving tactics, and overarching strategy of keeping any government interference in their ability to make profits to a minimum by mobilising the general public to protest against the very reforms that would be of benefit to them.

It lends so much weight to the arguments for health insurance reform to have an insider come out for them. There are some people who are able to rationalize away your testimony, but I'm sure they are a very small minority of the people who have heard what you have to say.

So, once again, thanks for what you are doing.

Cruelty to We The dear Sheeple

Thank you Wendell Potter for speaking out. My gratitude overfloweth.

I think of my Irish-American friend whose sister is still in Ireland. The poor sister has everything wrong with her known to man and is completely taken care of and has a variety of caring nurses check up on her at home. Her society *takes care of her* -- because she's human and hurt. Because it's the bloody right thing to do. Because it would never occur to them to do otherwise. They see us as bizarre & barbaric.

As a Canadian full-fledged entrepreneur friend said to me when he showed me his Canada health card and said, "I can go anywhere in Canada and get anything fixed." He looked me in the eyes and said, "What the Hell is the matter with you people?"

I didn't and don't have an answer. For all the wonderful strengths of our dear country, our health care is brutal and botched. (Self-employed, I haven't had health coverage since 1979.) I think of my dearest friend whose hands turn blue, the fear in her dear face. And we worry about the well-being of health corporations giants? It's monstrous and it sickens me.

Profit is great for washing machines and ipods. It has zero place in health care, which should be part of our commonwealth, like fire departments and police.

I agree with you. No one

I agree with you. No one should profit from human suffering. Health care should be a commonwealth not an industry and enterprise.

Health Care in Ireland

You might want to check your facts about health care in Ireland. Our government is in deep crisis and is being forced to cut back health care on all fronts. Only the poorest in Ireland get free basic healthcare from the national health service executive. Others have to pay something. Many procedures are not available through the HSE, thus there is a private insurance market here as well.

Due to the global credit crisis, more hospitals are being forced to close or facing severe funding cut-backs, waiting lists are growing. It is not at all cheery over here at the moment.

Several flaws with your commentary

As an economist who has never read any of the insurance company spin, most, if not all the points made by "conservative talk" etc are quite intuitive to me, and I do not need a corporate PR wonk to point them out. Really, it is that intuitive. I seriously doubt your image of Big Insurance controlling the message of conservative talk radio, etc. Read what economists are writing about this, and you will read about concepts like rationing, shortages, price controls.

Furthermore, the fact that Big Insurance may be spreading this message does not in any way make the message untrue.

Finally, the myths of BIG Insurance dropping sick policy holders is patently false, because an insurance contract is a binding contract, and the firm would be sued for breach of contract. There are plenty of lawyers looking for that kind of case. It makes for a good movie (the Rainmaker), but that is the exception, not the MO.

I used to be one of those

I used to be one of those insurance company employees who reviewed groups who had high claims. We would review the claims data to help predict future claims and make recommendations for renewal or not. I also reviewed claims on individuals to see if claims could be denied due to preexisting conditions. It happens.