I knew I was part of the problem when I came face to face with hundreds of people, most of them soaking wet and standing in lines that stretched out of view, waiting to get care in animal stalls. That was the day I made a personal commitment to change my life—and to change the status quo.
Wendell Potter’s career in communications spans more than four decades, half of which he spent as a communications and public affairs executive for major health insurers, Humana and Cigna. After witnessing firsthand how these corporations use strategic PR and lobbying to tilt the scales toward corporate interests, Wendell abandoned his corporate career to advocate for meaningful health care reform.
In 2009, Wendell appeared before Congress to offer his expert testimony on health insurance in the U.S. He pulled the curtains back to reveal business practices and propaganda tactics that contribute to spiraling health care costs and the growing number of uninsured and underinsured Americans. Since then, Wendell has spoken at hundreds of public forums, written op-eds for numerous media outlets around the world, including The New York Times and Washington Post, and authored four books, including the New York Times bestseller, Deadly Spin.
No one understands better than Wendell how a few insurance companies have grown to gargantuan size; how they continue to mislead all of us, including our employers and the people we vote for, and spend huge sums of our taxes and premium dollars to enrich their executives and shareholders. Uniting his passion for journalism with years of insider knowledge, Wendell devotes his personal platforms to uncovering and reporting what his former employers try to hide. His mission is to illuminate the real causes of America’s worsening health care crisis. No spin. No partisan politics. Just the truth.
Wendell leads the nonprofit Center for Health and Democracy and the Lower Out-of-Pocket NOW Coalition, an organization that advocates for health insurance that doesn’t leave families buried under mountains of medical debt. He is also the publisher and executive editor of HEALTH CARE un-covered.
New York Times Article | Health Care Fit for Animals by Nik Kristof
