Welcome Back, Mr. Potter

Former Cigna insurance PR exec Wendell Potter has finally taken his story to a larger audience with CNN.

Wendell Potter knows a little something about the health care industry's practices and is not afraid of to speak out as the health care reform debate heats up around the country.

The former vice president of corporate communications at insurance giant Cigna, who left his post, says the industry is playing "dirty tricks" in an effort to manipulate public opinion.

"Words matter, and the insurance industry is a master at linguistics and using the hot words, buzzwords, buzz expressions that they know will get people upset," he told CNN Wednesday.

Now a senior fellow on health care for the watchdog group Center for Media and Democracy, Potter writes a blog on health care reform. He is focusing on efforts to defeat legislation supporting a government health care plan -- something he supports.

In early July, Potter testified before the Senate Commerce Committee, telling senators that "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."

Potter described how underwriters at his former company would drive small businesses with expensive insurance claims to dump their Cigna policies. Industry executives refer to the practice as "purging," Potter said.

"When that business comes up for renewal, the underwriters jack the rates up so much, the employer has no choice but to drop insurance," Potter had said.

I've talked about Wendell Potter a couple of times before. His insights into the practices of Cigna and other health insurance companies are invaluable and should be the center of the health care debate in this country. The free market is not working when it come to health insurance. Insurance companies, motivated by profit, have every reason to take in as much as they can through premiums and to deny care whenever and however possible. We should be having a debate in this country about how to give the for-profit insurance industry some competition where the focus is providing care, not making profits.

The insurance companies are not exactly working in good faith here. At the dead, bare minimum we need tremendous reform in the way health insurance companies function. Care is rationed through your ability to pay, and that is determined by your ability to afford health insurance comprehensive enough and expensive enough to allow you to afford health care's extraordinary costs.

Instead, America is having a debate over how outrageous the reasons people can come up with are to continue to deny any reform to the system. Hopefully, more focus on the real problems facing the country, more focus on people like Wendell Potter, will help change that narrative.