Book description
That's how Wendell Potter introduced himself to a Senate committee
in June 2009. He proceed to explain how insurance companies make
promises they have no intention of keeping, how they flout regulations
designed to protect consumers, and how they make it nearly impossible
to understand information that the public needs. Potter quit his
high-paid job as head of public relations at a major insurance
corporation because he could no longer abide the routine practices of
the insurance industry, policies that amounted to a death sentence for
thousands of Americans every year.
In Deadly Spin, Potter takes readers behind the scenes of
the insurance industry to show how a huge chunk of our absurd
healthcare expenditures actually bankrolls a propaganda campaign and
lobbying effort focused on protecting one thing: profits. With the
unique vantage of both a whistleblower and a high-powered former
insider, Potter moves beyond the healthcare crisis to show how public
relations works, and how it has come to play a massive, often
insidious role in our political process-and our lives.
This important and timely book tells Potter's remarkable personal
story, but its larger goal is to explain how people like Potter,
before his change of heart, can get the public to think and act in
ways that benefit big corporations-and the Wall Street money managers
who own them.
they are rewarded for it. All of this is in service of meeting what
[Potter] called 'Wall Street's relentless profit expectations.'
Wendell Potter is a Senior Fellow on Health Care for the Center
for Media and Democracy. In 2009, he retired after a twenty-year
career as a PR executive for health insurers to speak out on both the
need for health care reform and the increasingly unchecked influence
of corporate PR. He is a native of Tennessee.
