My name is Wendell Potter
and recently I joined the Board of Directors of Consumers for Affordable
Health Care based in Augusta. What you may not know is
that I used to be the Vice President of Corporate Communications for
CIGNA, one of the United States' largest health insurance companies.
Because of that experience, I'd like to ask you to support Consumers for Affordable
Health Care and their work to protect
consumers from insurance company excesses.
In June 2009, I blew the
whistle on the HMO industry in a hearing before the U.S. Senate. I
shared with Congress examples detailed in my book called Deadly
Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out On How Corporate
PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans. Here is the
opening of my testimony to the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce,
Science, and Transportation:
My name is Wendell Potter and
for 20 years, I worked as a senior executive at health insurance
companies, and I saw how they confuse their customers and dump the
sick - all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors.
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. Insurers make promises they have no intention of keeping,
they flout regulations designed to protect consumers, and they make
it nearly impossible to understand-or even to obtain-information we
need. As you hold hearings and discuss legislative proposals over the
coming weeks, I encourage you to look very closely at the role
for-profit insurance companies play in making our health care system
both the most expensive and one of the most dysfunctional in the
world. I hope you get a real sense of what life would be like for
most of us if the kind of so-called reform the insurers are lobbying
for is enacted.
In 2013, you can be sure that
the insurance industry again will be running media campaigns to
confuse consumers about their choices and the laws intended to
protect consumers - just as the new Health Insurance Exchanges open
for enrollment to provide better, lower cost options to individuals
and small businesses.
That's why Consumers for Affordable
Health Care needs your help. In 2013 they want
to:
- Provide
consumers with apples-to-apples comparisons of their health plan
options
- Help many of
the 133,000 uninsured Mainers enroll in subsidized health
insurance
- Help small
businesses get tax credits to defray premiums
- Make insurance
companies pay out more for actual medical bills, not profits
- Advocate that
insurance rate hikes be approved by regulators
- Appeal denials
of medical coverage by insurance companies for consumers, and
- Much more!
Consumers for Affordable
Health Care represents your interests at the State House and in
hearings before the Maine Bureau of Insurance. They do the things
that many of us don't have the time or expertise to do.
Please be
generous in your support for your state-based industry watchdog - Consumers for Affordable
Health Care and help them get more Mainers
into the health insurance coverage they need.
You can donate online here or
by mail at PO Box 2490, Augusta, ME 04330.
Sincerely,
Wendell Potter
Consumers for
Affordable Health Care is a proud member of 
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