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You are here > Home > Reading Lists > Healthcare Policy & Politics > Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans Wendell Potter Hardcover: 288 pages ISBN 1608192814 978-1608192816 Bloomsbury Press November 2010 (click button below for the very best currently available price for this important resource) Wendell Potter is the insurance industry's worst nightmare. “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 "My name is Wendell Potter and for 20 years I worked as a senior executive at health insurance companies, and I saw how they confuse their customers and dump the sick—all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors." This is how the author of this book introduced himself to a Senate committee and it serves well as an introduction to this book. As a senior vice president of CIGNA, he had access to the inner workings of major insurance companies.   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.   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.   In Deadly 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. Potter shows how relentless PR assaults play an insidious role in our political process. Deadly Spin tells us why—and how—we must fight back.   “An illuminating, up-to-the-minute testimonial sure to garner widespread attention and controversy.”—Kirkus Reviews “May be the ideal whistleblower.”—Time “As one former insurance executive testified before Congress, insurance companies are not only encouraged to find reasons to drop the seriously ill; they are rewarded for it. All of this is in service of meeting what [Potter] called ‘Wall Street’s relentless profit expectations.’”—President Barack Obama, quoting Potter before Congress “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 did not do is reform the health care system. Wendell Potter explains why not, and what went wrong.”—Howard Dean “Wendell Potter transformed the national debate over health care when he stood up and told the truth about the health insurance industry. By breaking the insurance industry’s code of silence and explaining to his fellow Americans how health insurance companies put profits ahead of patient care, Wendell showed extraordinary courage. The compelling story of Wendell’s conversion from a health care executive to an outspoken reform advocate is essential reading for anyone trying to understand the American health care system.”—Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia “Deadly Spin makes clear what reporters were—and are—up against as they try, and often fail, to make the complex pros and cons of health care reform clear to citizens, as big-money players misdirect and obfuscate. More important, it illuminates what citizens are up against as they try to figure it out.”—Mike Hoyt, Executive Editor, Columbia Journalism Review Whatever the fate of the national health care legislation, most legislation currently being considered still makes no attempt to change that fundamental problem.   “Trenchantly critiques the failure of America's for-profit health-insurance system: the underhanded methods insurers use to ‘dump the sick’; the skyrocketing premiums and deductibles that put health care beyond the reach of millions; the obscene salaries executives rake in while denying benefits to patients. These criticisms aren't new, but Potter's street cred and deep knowledge of the industry make his indictment unusually vivid and compelling.”—Publishers Weekly   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. If you are interested in policy or books about health care reform, please see our up-to-date collection here: Politics, Policy & Reform. 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