The point of this post is to tell you about the work of ex-Cigna VP Wendell Potter, who quit the healthcare insurance company a decade ago to testify against the HMO industry at a 2009 Senate hearing.
Potter published his book Deadly Spin — which has the deeply upsetting subtitle How Corporate PR is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans — a year later.
In 2016 he came out with Nation on the Take on how money corrupts democracy (obviously, but the more people talk about it, the more likely the needle will get moved).
And in 2017 Potter founded Tarbell, a non-profit, reader-funded journalism entity that has been exposing "how powerful people and companies use their influence to shape a system that works for them, not you."
The lead article, for example, in its newsletter this week (and co-published by the Intercept) is new for me:Author Andrew Perez draws attention to "a dark money organization created last year to erode public support for Medicare for All" — the Partnership for America's Health Care Future (PAHCF).
Membership includes a spectrum of medical and pharmaceutical companies, but Perez warns of the "integral role" that specifically for-profit hospitals play in this effort. Private insurance companies apparently pay hospitals two or three times more than what Medicare does to cover care costs.Back to Potter, though, for more of his projects.
...
...You get the picture.
Happy reading.
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