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.
One Big Reason Why Small Biz Job Growth Has Slowed to a Crawl
Want to be an entrepreneur but also be certain you'll have health insurance? Good luck with that. You might seriously consider moving to Denmark or Canada. Those countries have not only achieved universal health care coverage for their citizens -- coverage that's not tied to employment -- but they have ...
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 of the Sarkisyans' only daughter, Nataline, this coming Saturday, July 9, in Calabasas, Calif. Gingrey could consider it a legitimate, reimbursable fact-finding mission. He clearly ...
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 debate. If more Americans paid attention to the fate of neighbors and loved ones who have fallen victim to the cruel dysfunction of our health ...
Nonprofit Insurers: Reaping Profits at the Expense of the Consumer
Nowhere are health insurers working harder to thwart reforms that could save consumers billions of dollars than in California. One measure they are especially determined to kill is a bill that would give state regulators the authority to reject rate increases that were excessive or discriminatory. The California Assembly passed ...
Got Health Insurance Through Your Employer? Maybe Not for Long (But Not Because of Reform)
The global consulting firm McKinsey & Company set off a firestorm when it released a report last week suggesting that 30 percent of U.S. businesses will stop offering health care benefits to their employees after most of the provisions of the Affordable Care Act go into effect in 2014. The ...
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 dollars you pay for coverage are being sucked into a kind of black hole. It doesn't really disappear, of course. It just doesn't do you ...
Health Insurers Have Had Their Chance
Of the many supporters of a single-payer health care system in the United States, some of the most ardent are small business owners who have struggled to continue offering coverage to their workers. Among them are David Steil, a small business owner and former Republican -- yes, Republican -- state ...
Insurance Industry Flack Screws Up, Points Us to Report We Really Should Read
I turned 43 a couple of weeks after I joined CIGNA in 1993. One of the birthday gifts from my new colleagues was a framed three-word quote by E. B. White: "Be obscure clearly." We laughed and laughed. It was an inside joke -- and a perfect present for an ...
Got Health Insurance? Pray You Won't Get "Purged"
You might not realize it, but this is National Small Business Week. I'm betting many small business owners aren't aware of it, either. Perhaps that's because most small business owners are far more likely to be worrying about whether they'll be able to offer health insurance to their employees for ...
Health Execs Getting Richer As Some Americans Beg for Help to Pay for Care
On Monday, I wrote about the good fortune of UnitedHealth Group, one of the big seven for-profit health insurance companies, and its CEO, Stephen J. Hemsley. Last week, UnitedHealth pleased Wall Street so much with its report of earnings during the first three months of this year that investors clamored ...
Ryan's Medicare Plan Would Be a Windfall for Insurance Companies
Rep. Paul Ryan's plan to privatize Medicare would accelerate a trend started several years ago by corporate CEOs and their political allies to shift ever-increasing amounts of risk from Big Business and the government to workers and retirees. If enacted, the Ryan plan would represent a windfall of unprecedented proportions ...
The ‘Front Group’ hall of shame
Today will go down in the public relations history books as the day health insurers and their allies began a coordinated campaign to ensure that the health care reform law is implemented in ways that will benefit them way more than the rest of us. Today is the day they ...
Pay Much Attention to the Insurers Behind Paul Ryan's Curtain
Democrats who think Paul Ryan and his Republican colleagues have foolishly wrapped their arms around the third rail of American politics by proposing to hand the Medicare program to private insurers will themselves look foolish if they take for granted that the public will always be on their side. Rep. ...
Death Panels: Fact and Fiction
"Death panels" are back in the news, and Congress is turning its attention to them once again. The problem is, lawmakers are looking in all the wrong places. The House Energy and Commerce Committee, now headed by Republicans, sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius last ...
'How Everybody Exists' Doesn't Have to Be
If you want to know how things really get done in Washington -- or don't get done, depending on the desires of America's corporate executives -- all you have to do is read a couple of paragraphs in a Jan. 23 Philadelphia Inquirer story (see page 2).Reporter Joe DiStefano quotes ...
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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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