Deadly Spin An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans

by Potter, Wendell

• ISBN13: 9781608192816
• ISBN10: 1608192814
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-11-09
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Press

Summary

Wendell Potter is the insurance industry's worst nightmare. In June 2009, Wendell Potter made national headlines with his scorching testimony before the Senate panel on health care reform. This former senior VP of CIGNA explained how health insurers make promises they have no intention of keeping, how they flout regulations designed to protect consumers, and how they skew political debate with multibillion-dollar PR campaigns designed to spread disinformation. Potter had walked away from a six-figure salary and two decades as an insurance executive because he could no longer abide the routine practices of an industry where the needs of sick and suffering Americans take a backseat to the bottom line. The last straw: when he visited a rural health clinic and saw hundreds of people standing in line in the rain to receive treatment in stalls built for livestock. InDeadly Spin, Potter takes readers behind the scenes to show how a huge chunk of our absurd healthcare spending actually bankrolls a propaganda campaign and lobbying effort focused on protecting one thing: profits. Whatever the fate of the current health care legislation, it makes no attempt to change that fundamental problem.Potter shows how relentless PR assaults play an insidious role in our political process anywhere that corporate profits are at stake from climate change to defense policy.Deadly Spintells us why and how we must fight back.Wendell Potter is a straight shooter and he hits the bulls-eye here with an expose of corporate power that reveals why real health care reform didn't happen, can't happen, and won't happen until that power is contained. Bill Moyers. The recently passed health care bill did many good things, including make health insurance available to more Americans and restrain some of the most egregious practices of the health insurance industry. It also forced more people to become customers of that industry. What the bill didnotdo is reform the health care system. Wendell Potter explains why not, and what went wrong.Howard Dean

Author Biography

Wendell Potter is a Senior Fellow on Health Care for the Center for Media and Democracy. In 2009, he retired after a twenty-year career as a PR executive for health insurers to speak out on both the need for health care reform and the increasingly unchecked influence of corporate PR. He is a native of Tennessee.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
The Beginning	p. 11
The Campaign Against Sicko	p. 29
Perception Is Reality	p. 45
Remote Area Medical in Wise County, Virginia	p. 63
Health Care History, Reform, and Failure	p. 79
Consumer-Driven Care	p. 101
It's All About the Money	p. 125
An End Too Soon	p. 147
ERISA Stymies the Sarkisyans, and Us	p. 175
A Victory, of Sorts	p. 187
The Playbook	p. 211
Spinning Out of Control	p. 235
Acknowledgments	p. 249
Notes	p. 253
Index	p. 263
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.