What Wendell Potter said that you haven't heard...as of yet!

From John Curry, June 30, 2009

Potter, for instance, recalled a trip on a corporate jet from Philadelphia, where CIGNA is headquartered, to Connecticut, where the company's health insurance business is based in Bloomfield. During the flight, he was served lunch on gold-rimmed china with a gold-plated knife and fork.

"I realized for the first time that someone's insurance premiums were paying for me to travel in such luxury," he said on his blog.

However, Potter warned senators that the industry's "charm offensive — which is the most visible part of duplicitous and well-financed PR and lobbying campaigns — may well shape reform in a way that benefits Wall Street far more than average Americans."

One wonders if some of that "charm offensive" didn't affect those at STRS who bought into a Medicare advange program for STRS stakeholders....we'll know better one year down the road when it's time for renewal, won't we? John

Courant.com
SENATE HEARING

Former CIGNA Exec Has Stinging Words For Health Insurers

By DIANE LEVICK
The Hartford Courant
June 25, 2009

A former media relations executive from CIGNA turned dramatically against health insurers at a Senate committee hearing Wednesday, calling the industry an "untrustworthy" partner for its customers and "duplicitous" in blocking meaningful health care reform.

"They confuse their customers and dump the sick — all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors," said Wendell Potter, who retired as CIGNA's vice president of corporate communications last year. He spent nearly 15 years at the company and four years at Humana.

He spoke at a Washington hearing of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation along with others who lambasted health insurers for making their policies and claim-paying methods hard to understand.

Potter urged health care reform that includes a public health plan to compete with private insurers, and told senators the industry is using the kind of fear tactics that they employed to sink reform during the Clinton administration.

He said he was not speaking out because of any grudge against CIGNA. The company treated him well with "lots of bonuses" over the years and persuaded him to stay longer than he'd planned, he said.

But he said he has had a growing feeling in recent years "that the health insurance industry was taking the country in the wrong direction and was directly contributing to the problem of the uninsured and under-insured in the country." The industry, he said, "is not part of the solution as they want us to believe; they are part of the problem."

Potter, for instance, recalled a trip on a corporate jet from Philadelphia, where CIGNA is headquartered, to Connecticut, where the company's health insurance business is based in Bloomfield. During the flight, he was served lunch on gold-rimmed china with a gold-plated knife and fork.

"I realized for the first time that someone's insurance premiums were paying for me to travel in such luxury," he said on his blog.

Potter, 57, is now a senior fellow — a paid consultant — at the Wisconsin-based Center for Media and Democracy, a nonprofit organization describing its mission as "exposing corporate spin and government propaganda."

Although Potter revealed no new "smoking guns" Wednesday, he lashed out at insurance practices that have surfaced over the years but may not be well-known to the public.

He condemned insurers' efforts to get rid of unprofitable customers, sell policies that can mislead consumers and offer very limited coverage, and pay out as small a portion of premiums as possible for claims in order to boost profits and please Wall Street.

"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," Potter's written testimony said.

Also testifying at the hearing was Nancy Metcalf of West Hartford, senior program editor for Consumer Reports magazine and a former Hartford Courant reporter and editor. She spoke about the dangers of limited health insurance plans.

Potter described in written testimony how insurers use "purging" — unrealistic rate increases — to drive off less profitable employers. Citing a USA Today report, he recalled how CIGNA boosted rates in 2006 for the Entertainment Industry Group Insurance Trust so much that for some family plans, premiums would have topped $44,000 a year.

He also recalled how Aetna in the 1990s spent more than $20 million to overhaul computer systems to help the company better identify unprofitable accounts and drop them.

CIGNA, responding to Potter's testimony, said Wednesday, "Although we respect that there are different opinions on the solutions, we strongly disagree with the suggestion that, motivated by profits, the insurance industry has deliberately attempted to confuse or unfairly treat covered individuals."

CIGNA said it advocates for "the importance of information transparency and simplicity" and that it is "working actively and constructively with the administration, Congress and key stakeholders to develop solutions that will increase the access to and quality of health care — and at the same time reduce costs for all."

The trade group America's Health Insurance Plans responded, "We continue to be focused on advancing comprehensive health care reform that addresses the health-care concerns we heard from the American people." Insurers, the group said, have proposed "overhauling the market rules and enacting new consumer protections so nobody is left out, simplifying health care choices for individuals and small businesses, and reforming the delivery system to improve the quality and affordability of health care coverage."

However, Potter warned senators that the industry's "charm offensive — which is the most visible part of duplicitous and well-financed PR and lobbying campaigns — may well shape reform in a way that benefits Wall Street far more than average Americans."

Potter's testimony to the U.S. Senate can be accessed by clicking on this link:
http://commerce.senate.gov/public/_files/PotterTestimonyConsumerHealthInsurance.pdf

www.courant.com/business/hc-cigna-potter.artjun25,0,4107201.story