By Greg Hazley
Wendell Potter, the former Cigna corporate communications executive turned critic, this week kicked off a national book tour to support "Deadly Spin," his takedown of the healthcare sector and its PR on the Bloomsbury Press imprint.
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Potter was senior VP/comms. at Cigna until stepping down after 15 years in the sector and has recently affiliated with the Center for Media and Democracy, a PR watchdog. He first caused a stir last year when he testified before a Senate panel on healthcare reform claiming that healthcare insurers are mostly focused on profits over the welfare (and in some cases to the detriment) of patients.
Potter’s book opens with this mea culpa: "About 45,000 people die in America every year because they have no health insurance and I have been responsible for some of that shameful statistic."
He started a 21-city national book tour in D.C. on Nov. 9 and 10 to support the release of the book, which carries the full title "Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans."
Potter, who thinks the healthcare reform law passed this year does not go far enough in reining in the industry, told Fox Business Network Nov. 4 that insurers will not likely support Republican efforts to repeal the measure because it actually helps them.
"There’s a lot that helps them," he said. "It also props up the employer-based system, which has been unraveling over the past several years. This will also give them many millions of new enrollees and also, over the course of 10 years, many billions of dollars in new revenue."
Potter said the law is "a start."
In reviewing the book, Time magazine’s Kate Pickert wrote: "Great P.R. flacks are as talented with misdirection as they are with the truth." Pickert called the book a "gripping indictment of his old bosses at insurance giant Cigna and of corporate PR pros everywhere…"
Potter spoke at the 2009 PRSA conference in San Diego to the disdain of some healthcare PR pros in the audience who view him as more of a traitor than a "hero."
Related:
Potter - A Hero or Traitor to PR?
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