TNRtv: Former Health Insurance Insider Slams Industry

[MinM]

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_treatment/archive/2009/06/24/potter-tnrtv.aspx

Wendell Potter, who spent more than two decades as a public relations executive for CIGNA and Humana, explains how health insurers con consumers, how the industry is a cash cow for Wall Street, and why health reform must include a public plan: "I don't think this is an industry that is honest enough to ever be regulated as it should be."...

I know from personal experience that members of Congress and the public have good reason to question the honesty and trustworthiness of the insurance industry. Insurers make promises they have no intention of keeping, they flout regulations designed to protect consumers, and they make it nearly impossible to understand--or even to obtain--information we need. As you hold hearings and discuss legislative proposals over the coming weeks, I encourage you to look very closely at the role for-profit insurance companies play in making our health care system both the most expensive and one of the most dysfunctional in the world. I hope you get a real sense of what life would be like for most of us if the kind of so-called reform the insurers are lobbying for is enacted.

When I left my job as head of corporate communications for one of the country's largest insurers, I did not intend to go public as a former insider. However, it recently became abundantly clear to me that the industry's charm offensive--which is the most visible part of duplicitous and well-financed PR and lobbying campaigns-may well shape reform in a way that benefits Wall Street far more than average Americans...

[Psychic Consortium]

1. The dirty secret is that the insurance companies are run by sociopaths, like the banking industry.

Greed, corruption, dishonesty.
They kill others for their own gain.

There will be no place for them in the 21st century.