Great interview with former Cigna VP Wendell Potter on healthcare reform.

[EFerrari]

“They Dump the Sick to Satisfy Investors”: Insurance Exec Turned Whistleblower Wendell Potter Speaks Out Against Healthcare Industry
Potter-web

As the debate over healthcare reform intensifies on Capitol Hill, we spend the hour with a former top insurance executive who’s now exposing the industry’s dirty secrets. Wendell Potter once served as the head of corporate communications at CIGNA, one of the nation’s largest health insurance companies. We speak to Potter about his own transformation from industry mouthpiece to whistleblower, the healthcare industry’s extensive PR and lobbying machine, the campaign to discredit Michael Moore’s film Sicko, and the insurance industry’s most pressing task: the fight against a public option, let alone a single-payer system.

Wendell Potter, former head of corporate communications at insurance giant CIGNA. He is now a fellow at the Center for Media and Democracy.

AMY GOODMAN: As the healthcare reform debate intensifies on Capitol Hill, we spend the hour today with a former top executive from one of the nation’s largest health insurance companies who has begun exposing some of the industry’s dirty secrets. This whistleblower testified before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation last month.

WENDELL POTTER: My name is Wendell Potter, and for twenty years I worked as a senior executive at health insurance companies. And I saw how they confused their customers and dumped the sick, so all they—so also they can satisfy their Wall Street investors.


AMY GOODMAN: Wendell Potter joins us today for the hour.

Up until last year he was the head of corporate communications at CIGNA, one of the nation’s largest for-profit health insurance companies. He served as CIGNA’s chief corporate spokesperson. He also once headed communications at Humana, another large for-profit health insurer. In 2007, Wendell Potter helped spearhead the healthcare industry’s campaign against Michael Moore’s movie Sicko. Today he is a fellow at the Center for Media and Democracy and is becoming one of the most prominent industry whistleblowers.


Audio, video, transcript at link!

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/7/16/former_insurance_exec_wendell_porter

[TexasObserver]

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