Following a 20-year career as a corporate public relations executive, Wendell left his position as head of communications for CIGNA, one of the nation’s largest health insurers, to help socially responsible organizations — including those advocating for meaningful health care reform — achieve their goals.
In widely covered testimony before the Senate Commerce, Science and Technology Committee in June of 2009, Wendell disclosed how the insurance industry has developed and implemented strategic communications plans, based on deceptive public relations, advertising and lobbying efforts, to defeat reform initiatives.
His new book, Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans, is an expose of health insurers and a stark warning that corporate spin is distorting our democracy.
Wendell is currently a senior analyst at the The Center for Public Integrity. His website is WendellPotter.com, and his twitter account is @WendellPotter.
Spinning the Supreme Court's 'Obamacare' decision
I learned that Mitt Romney had won the Nebraska Republican presidential primary last week via a “Breaking News” e-mail alert from POLITICO. It wasn’t the news from the Cornhusker state, however, that caught my eye. It was instead the health insurance industry’s decision to spend our premium dollars on an ...
Palin's rhetoric torpedoed Medicare savings
We’ll be hearing a lot from politicians this summer and fall about the urgency of dealing with Medicare spending, which will begin to rise sharply in the coming years as increasing numbers of the country’s 75 million baby boomers turn 65. If we’re fortunate, some courageous candidates will call for ...
You’ve heard it before. Let’s deep six ObamaCare and replace it with a trio of sure-fire free-market solutions to the problems that plague our health care system. All that’s really needed, we’re told, is to pass tort reform, allow insurance companies to sell policies across state lines and encourage people ...
Putting our premiums into medical care, not profits
The recent news from the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation that health insurers will have to send rebate checks totaling more than $1.3 billion to Americans this summer was especially gratifying to me. It more than justified my decision three years ago to clue members of Congress in on how insurance ...
Shareholders raising ruckus about CEO pay
One of my responsibilities when I was head of corporate communications at Cigna was to help ensure that the company’s annual meeting of shareholders ran smoothly and, if at all possible, attracted no negative publicity. I always dreaded the annual meeting because you really never knew if one or more ...
Why the Insurance Industry Needs Obamacare to Stay in Business
If there is a group of people more anxious about how the Supreme Court will rule on the health care reform law than President Obama and the millions of Americans who are already benefiting from it, it is health insurance executives. Not only have their companies been spending millions of ...
Hope the Supremes Strike Down ObamaCare? Get Ready for PanemCare
Since Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia clearly isn't going to take the time to actually read the health care reform law before he decides whether or not it's constitutional, maybe he and a couple of his buddies on the High Court can catch a screening of The Hunger Games, the ...
How We All Got Stuck Paying the Medical Bills of the Woman Who Sued to Kill Obamacare
If I were trying to persuade the Supreme Court later this month that Obamacare should not be declared unconstitutional, I would tell the story of the woman who was the original named plaintiff in the lawsuit filed by the National Federation of Independent Business, one of the fiercest critics of ...
Coming Soon: The End of Health Insurers As We Know Them -- By Self-Inflicted Wounds
Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini caused quite a stir when he said at a Las Vegas conference a few days ago that the insurance industry as we know it is, for all practical purposes, a dinosaur on the verge of extinction. Time to sing, "Ding dong the witch is dead"? Not ...
Health Care Myths and Realities: Seeking the Truth About High-Deductible Plans
Recent news releases from two very different organizations paint entirely separate pictures of what can happen to people once they sign up for a high-deductible health plan. One release from Cigna, the giant for-profit insurance firm I used to work for, would lead us to believe that human resource managers ...
Taking the initiative in a struggle against excessive rate increases
The biggest applause line Senator Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) got at a gathering of Democratic Party activists last week came when she endorsed a ballot initiative to give the California Insurance Commissioner power to reject excessive health insurance rate increases. Consumer advocates there decided to go the ballot initiative route after ...
This Just In, insurers Required to Speak Plain English
HHS stiffens spine and requires health insurance companies to clearly explain their policies. All the attention paid to the debacle about coverage for contraceptives over the past several days obscured a broader, undisputed win for all consumers, including those who are pregnant or about to be pregnant. While the media ...
The Battle for Vermont's Health -- And Why It Matters for the Rest of the Country
You can't see them. They're hidden from view and probably always will be. But the health insurance industry's big guns are in place and pointed directly at the citizens of Vermont. Health insurers were not able to stop the state's drive last year toward a single-payer health care system, which ...
Paying For Cancer Treatment for Children in America With a Car Wash, Bake Sale and Fish Fry
"It shouldn't be this way," read the subject line of an email I received Friday morning from a conservative friend and fellow Southerner. "People shouldn't have to beg for money to pay for medical care." At first, I thought he was referring to my column last week in which I ...
Park City Vantage Point Puts Tragedy of American Health Care in Vivid Relief
The journey I embarked on when I made the decision to leave a successful career in the health insurance business was a spiritual one. I can trace the decision to a true epiphany, to the very moment I saw hundreds of people standing, soaking wet, in long, slow-moving lines, waiting ...
Keep Nataline's Spirit of Christmas Alive
It was four years ago today that I received a phone call from a Los Angeles TV reporter that would change my life, although I certainly didn't realize it at the time. The reporter said she had been told that CIGNA, the big health insurer I worked for back then, ...
Using PR Playbook to Keep Us in the Dark About Health Insurance Coverage
If you wonder why the health insurance industry has to set up front groups and secretly funnel cash to industry-funded coalitions to influence public policy, take a look at the most recent results of the Kaiser Family Foundation's monthly Health Tracking Poll. In its November poll, KFF added a few ...
Does the U.S. Have the World's Best Health Care System? Yes, If You're Talking About the Third World
A little more than a year ago, on the day after the GOP regained control of the House of Representatives, Speaker-to-be John Boehner said one of the first orders of business after he took charge would be the repeal of health care reform. "I believe that the health care bill ...
Recycling a Front Group to Cheat Us Out of Benefits
The special interests seeking to gut those portions of the health reform law that would be of greatest benefit to consumers clearly believe there is no such thing as historical memory in Washington. Why else would they bring one of their old front groups out of the storage locker, with ...
"Pre-existing" Is Not as Scary a Term as It Used to Be, Thanks to ObamaCare
Today I return to addressing some of the concerns that people are having with obtaining coverage or dealing with their health insurance carriers. Many of the questions I have received pertain to pre-existing conditions, including the one below that was received via Twitter. Dear Wendell Will people with pre-existing conditions ...
As I wrote last week, Maine and California are taking radically different approaches to implementing health care reforms within their boundaries. While the GOP-controlled government in Augusta has passed legislation that gives health insurers far more control of the health care system than they’ve ever had, lawmakers in Sacramento are ...
The lobbyists for U.S. health insurers surely have to be feeling a little uneasy knowing that thousands of Occupy Wall Street demonstrators who have been marching and protesting in Washington as well as New York and other cities might target them in the days ahead. After all, the headquarters of ...
Health insurers win big in Maine
Augusta, Maine — Almost 3,200 miles separate Sacramento and Augusta, but the gulf between those two state capitals actually seems much greater when measuring the comparative trust that political leaders there have placed in health insurance companies. This week and next, I will provide a glimpse into the contrasting ...
Dr. Bruce Kinosian still makes house calls, and he’s proud of it. In fact, he introduces himself as a physician who goes to see his patients in their homes rather than insisting that they come to see him at his office. He’s convinced that if more doctors did what he ...
Health Insurers Sacrifice Americans for Profit
Three of the biggest health insurers have announced quarterly earnings in the past few days. If Americans were able to eavesdrop on what executives from those firms tell their Wall Street masters every three months, they would have a better understanding of why premiums keep going up while the number ...
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April 23rd, 2013
The Higher Health Insurers' Claim Denial Rate, the Higher the CEO Pay
When you're shopping for health insurance, wouldn't it be great if you could find out every insurer's claim denial rate? And how much each one ...
March 12th, 2013
Don't Fall for TV Ads on Medicare From an Insurance Industry Front Group
Facing government cuts to one of their cash cows -- private Medicare plans -- health insurance companies have launched a multi-pronged campaign, financed by customer ...
November 26th, 2012
Giving thanks for regulation of insurance industry greed
Although it’s a few days past Thanksgiving, I’m still feeling grateful, even to much maligned federal employees. Last week bureaucrats at the Department of Health ...
November 19th, 2012
The Usual Suspects Who Will Benefit From Gutting Obamacare Now Want You to Worry About 'Disruption'
Disruption. Get ready to hear that word many times in the coming weeks, especially if you hang out inside the Washington beltway. "Disruption" will be ...
November 12th, 2012
Translating Insurance-Speak: What the industry says about Obamacare isn't really what it means
Health insurers invested a lot of what you paid them in premiums in an effort to get more of their friends elected to Congress. As ...
October 15th, 2012
Myths of the healthy uninsured
I understand where Mitt Romney was coming from when he said last week that Americans without health insurance don’t have to worry about dying at ...
October 10th, 2012
Romney's phony answers to tough health care questions
During last week’s debate, GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney once again pledged to repeal Obamacare, but he was light on details about what he would ...
February 3rd, 2012
Paying For Cancer Treatment for Children in America With a Car Wash, Bake Sale and Fish Fry
"It shouldn't be this way," read the subject line of an email I received Friday morning from a conservative friend and fellow Southerner. "People shouldn't ...
March 13th, 2012
How We All Got Stuck Paying the Medical Bills of the Woman Who Sued to Kill Obamacare
If I were trying to persuade the Supreme Court later this month that Obamacare should not be declared unconstitutional, I would tell the story of ...
July 6th, 2011
One of my favorite bumper stickers reads, "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention." That's sort of how I feel about the health care ...
March 6th, 2012
Coming Soon: The End of Health Insurers As We Know Them -- By Self-Inflicted Wounds
Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini caused quite a stir when he said at a Las Vegas conference a few days ago that the insurance industry as ...
April 2nd, 2012
Hope the Supremes Strike Down ObamaCare? Get Ready for PanemCare
Since Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia clearly isn't going to take the time to actually read the health care reform law before he decides whether ...
June 15th, 2011
Health Insurers Pump Your Premiums Into a Financial Black Hole
Ever wonder what happens to the premiums you pay for your health insurance? You might be surprised to learn that more and more of the ...
July 7th, 2011
Death Panels Real and Imagined
On behalf of Grigor and Hilda Sarkisyan, I would like to invite Republican Rep. Phil Gingrey of Georgia to attend the 21 st birthday celebration ...
'Dirty Wars' by Jeremy Scahill
Why have you started a comedy festival in northern Michigan in the middle of winter?
Because if you were here in the dead of winter in the middle of nowhere (which is actually somewhere to us), you'd need a few laughs too ... Continue Reading
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