Deadly Spin

An Interview with health insurance industry whistleblower Wendell Potter

by Brian K. Mahoney and photographs by Lucy Nicholson , February 24, 2011

For over 20 years, he worked as a public relations executive in the health insurance industry, eventually becoming chief of corporate communications at one of the nation’s largest for-profit insurers, CIGNA. Potter was a good spinmeister, perpetuating (and in some instances, creating) the cherished myths of healthcare in this country: that the United States has the best healthcare system in the world, that the free market will offer the best healthcare options for consumers, that single-payer healthcare is tantamount to socialism and will limit healthcare choices for patients.

By 2007, however, Potter was starting to have misgivings about the industry he increasingly believed was focused on profit and deception rather than supplying adequate care to its clients. One incident in particular affected Potter. On a trip home to Tennessee to see his parents, Potter visited a healthcare encampment set up by Remote Area Medical, a group that provides free medical care to remote communities. In his corporate mea culpa Deadly Spin (Bloomsbury Press, 2010), Potter describes the scene as “a movie set or a war zone. Hundreds of people, many of them soaking wet from the rain that had been falling all morning, were waiting in lines that stretched out of view.” They were all waiting to see a doctor. Most of those waiting had jobs, just no medical insurance. Potter’s conversion from PR flack to industry critic had begun. He left CIGNA early in 2008.

In 2009, Potter was testifying at a Senate hearing as the healthcare reform legislation was being drafted. His testimony helped galvanize pro-reform legislators and pulled back the curtain on what Potter termed “an evil system built and sustained on greed.” Potter is currently a senior analyst at the Center for Public Integrity and a senior fellow on health care at the Center for Media and Democracy. I spoke with him in early February.

What happened to turn you from an insurance company insider to an outspoken critic of the insurance industry?
I was having misgivings about what I was doing for a living for months before I decided to leave my job. It took a series of events to really push me to make the decision, and I had somewhat of an epiphany, a Road to Damascus sort of experience, back in the summer of 2007 when I was visiting my family in Tennessee. I happened to read about something called a “healthcare expedition” being held a few miles from where I grew up. I went there out of curiosity and it was almost as if it was divinely inspired or meant for me to be there because what I saw was life changing. It was a shock to see hundreds and hundreds of people lined up waiting to get care that was provided to them for free in animal stalls and barns. A scene that I just couldn’t imagine was in the United States of America. But I also knew that those folks were having to stand in line to get care in animal stalls partly because of the industry that I served and was a spokesman for.

In what ways did you see the insurance industry trying to influence the national conversation on healthcare reform last year?
I could see that the talking points my former colleagues and I had put together were being used by opponents of reform, and I knew that the insurance industries’ deceptive PR campaign was under way. The industry had a two-pronged PR strategy. One was to say things publicly that insurance company executives felt that the public would want to hear, and that the Congress and the president would want to hear, and these would be comments like “We’re supportive of healthcare reform this time, we’re going to be working with Congress and the president to help enact comprehensive reform.” When, behind the scenes, they were doing all that they could to make sure that the president’s vision of reform and the congressional leaders’ vision of reform was not going to be enacted. So I knew that a lot of the language being used by opponents of reform, such as “a government takeover of the healthcare system,” was coming straight from the insurance industry.