Go Ahead, Mister Wendell

Former Cigna Insurance PR exec Wendell Potter has an informative and well-written op-ed piece up at CNN.com.

Friday morning my former CIGNA buddy sent me an e-mail challenging something he said his wife heard me say in a radio report about my press conference in the Capitol on Wednesday with Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-New York, chairwoman of the House Rules Committee.

"She heard you say that these protestors are funded by the insurance companies. Frankly, nothing would surprise me, but certainly not each and every person," he wrote. "If there was a meeting near me, I certainly would tell my local representative how I feel about this entire subject (and it wouldn't be pretty), and I certainly am not funded by anyone. So I am ultimately wondering what proof there is that seemingly ordinary Americans are finally protesting what is going in Washington and there are all of these suggestions of a greater conspiracy."

If the radio report had carried more of my remarks, he might have a better understanding of how the health insurance and its army of PR people are influencing his opinions and actions without his even knowing it.

Until I quit my job last year, I was one of the leaders of that army. I had a very successful career and was my company's voice to the media and the public for several years.

It was my job to "promote and defend" the company's reputation and to try to persuade reporters to write positive stories about the industry's ideas on reform. During the last couple of years of my career, however, I became increasingly worried that the high-deductible plans insurers were beginning to push Americans into would force more and more of us into bankruptcy.

The higher I rose in the company, the more I learned about the tactics insurers use to dump policyholders when they get sick, in order to increase profits and to reward their Wall Street investors. I could not in good conscience continue serving as an industry mouthpiece. And I did not want to be part of yet another industry effort to kill meaningful reform.

I explained during the press conference with Rep. Slaughter how the industry funnels millions of its policyholders' premiums to big public relations firms that provide talking points to conservative talk show hosts, business groups and politicians. I also described how the PR firms set up front groups, again using your premium dollars and mine, to scare people away from reform.

What I'm trying to do as I write and speak out against the insurance industry I was a part of for nearly two decades is to inform Americans that when they hear isolated stories of long waiting times to see doctors in Canada and allegations that care in other systems is rationed by "government bureaucrats," someone associated with the insurance industry wrote the original script.

The industry has been engaging in these kinds of tactics for many years, going back to its successful behind-the-scenes campaign to kill the Clinton reform plan.

And Potter should know. He helped design and implement that talking point campaign for Cigna and help run it for years. There's a reason why there has been no meaningful health care reform in decades, and that reason is the insurance companies have the money to influence politicians and the media. This latest iteration has been very successful, with the internet and targeted e-mails to supporters, the battle lines are instantly reformed again and again to attack each facet of the reform before Congress.

The talking points that you'll hear people repeat time and time again are from the insurance industry. They have been for twenty years, and this is directly from somebody whose job was to write those talking points. Americans have been played for years into voting against their own self-interest. It's happening again, and with greater virulence this time around but the playbook is the same.

And decades of "government health care is bad" slammed into our collective psyche for years and years has taken its toll. America is once again being expertly manipulated by the best PR resources money can buy, and the GOP and the Village are more than happy to go with the script. Whether it's Limbaugh or Beck, John Boehner or Eric Cantor, or FreedomWorks or the teabaggers, all of it comes from the same tainted well they've been drawing this garbage from forever.

And Wendell Potter helped to dig that well. Now, he's trying to atone, thankfully.