you know you you'd recently on the keith olbermann show and i watched it with
great interest that you were alongside michael moran in the book you describe
how you actually you if you were a number one very up front about how
worried a lot of the companies like cigna and other insurers were
the movie sicko coming out andy actually talk about going to sacramento i believe
it wasn't sitting in the back and take
notes during the screening of sicko
internally you were conflicted i mean you you thought that the movie actually
represented
pretty accurately a lot of what was wrong
with the health insurance system uh...
you've you've now
with keith olbermann you apologized to michael moore
when you now look back
the sicko incident you also described in the book going to a free care clinic and
i believe it was tennessee where people were literally put in animal stalls and
only about a third of the people that showed up were even able to get care
when you look back now is theirs
cific point that you say pushed you over the edge
all the
have gotten too in the book yet itself
enormous seventeen-year-old grow in california
uh... his doctors fitted needed to have a liver transplant she
and had leukemia permission for some time that came back
and up
would not approve coverage for the liver transplant with and her doctors
immediately admissibility a regular questioned him with an additional
documentation
and toll signup ip
from and there
experience medellin circadian
the fifteen-year-old name that she would have a fifty five percent chance of
living five years but she had to transplant
signals corporate uh...
the medical director disagree
and uh... refused to to provide coverage for the family didn't have the financial
means to pay for their own pocket and um... for consequently and chief
williams
taking days went by
while the the that the family was appealing that decision they were able
to it
bring a lot of uh... a public restaurants that they were savvy enough
to get the media involved in paying attention to this case
eventually
signet the cost of the public pressure
decided to help
pay for the coverage but it was too late
they announced that they have communicated to the family a family with
and i just joined us
thirtieth to trying to get that ginsburg came too late
and meddling died just hours after the family
captivated signet changed its mind
and that was the perfect frontline
handling the calls from reporters
we all over the world actually and i will pick up on that story and not be
i'd just uh... i'd handle i'll be called high profile cases in the past involving
blood
cigna members argument members that uh...
and gone to the media for one reason or another
this was just one that i i i i think i can't do this anymore and uh...
we've been
you know a few weeks later attorney my resignation when you turned in the
resignation from where you got the reasons why i mean what did you tell
your glasses
and i'll try to profit over yet
that event helped expedition philanthropy educ the carpet minded in
nuttin in support of virginia all these were contributing factors alan height
hide at that point did not what i wanted to do next
i think you know i didn't want to keep doing that
and uh... i i i would never tell him that i had a good long drives segment
and and i was breakup of the company to be very well
i guess didn't
want to do this anymore i'm going to do something else
uh... you know i mpeg dudack
by font differently from other executives and that was that was
apparent one of things
i don't have to forceful why didn't he do more to
work from where they had to change at the way
your company's operated but again you have the reality of wall street and
company have uh...
who their business plans based on
what they need to do it in the wall street expectations
you can really change that from the inside
twins
obviously eventually it became very clear that that you were don't
necessarily want to use the term whistleblower but it is used about u
conventionally what was the first instance where you really want public
with u distaste for what was being done
specifically at cigna kind of the the point of of no return in a sense right
they won't let them know hypocrite twenty-four went out and i'm
uh... i had just reached the point that i
doctor i could just
stay on the five hundred more it was back in more than a year after i left a
go for it started speaking out
but i thought id thing but the arcane p_r_ campaign begin to kick in for the
industry i could tell it with
picking him because i've been a part of it
of helping to plan it
and uh... i just couldn't in good conscience
state on the front lines have been
and just watch it and told and unfold in a way that i thought would be
detrimental
too
the american public
uh... so i'm making up their becomes a phone call especially at leading the led
me to some folks in it
connections with throughout the floor
chair lays the commerce frightened technology committee and he was planning
to hold a hearing on health insurance practices than that
if stephanie heard about made by the
comes for interview him
that leads me to be invited to testify before uh... before that committee
during that hearing and on you
joaquin tibet appearing roberto of atomic at the moment of my life could be
changed forever no thirty-minute before you actually thirteen that you were
going to be doing that
but i was going to be
day but they've yet
they learned at least twenty four hours before p pastor
the committee sends out a notice
aku committee
testifying and what the topic at the hearing committee
so they undoubtedly spell my name on the other the witness list and get it ended
cigna reached out to you to try to find out what are you going to say they're
trying to to try to tell you what not to say
they uh...
they knew that i would not have been an appropriate thing to do and if they had
ventricular i would have said something about it
the what the way they have handle need you will
is to morris pertinent an eclipse under hope that the media law
eventually lose interest in me and i will not have a platform anymore at that
they can outlast hate and implicated pretty good chance that may have a night
of the company have been around for quite a long time
but
there
and i think i would have at have offered in the flame p_r_ pipes if i were there
and somebody else is that what i'm doing
just going to write this a lot
hitler eventually that he will grow tired and i met man and he'll just go
away
you talk in the last few minutes we have left that there's a few other points an
interesting topic seaview gets you in the book and what is this is national
health care kind of is spread throughout the book your comments about it
hand there's an interesting story to tell that in
ne prior to world war one as many countries were creating kind of national
health care universal health care
missed there was actually a push in the united states to go in that direction
dan
end that with the start of world war one because
does it germany
system like that in place
are most in
e to create a propaganda campaign say
national health care whatever it with the the wording was a time that's a lot
like what germany has in germany's not friends with us right so was that when
if that had not happened could things really have gone completely differently
with national health care
it really good at work if you read that chapter of the history of efforts to
reform our health care system
if it's just that
uh... it just almost every decade danger a few decades that was their work
opportunity we we almost we almost had then something happened like that
the start of world war two longboard world war two or something like that
that just dash the hopes of reform advocates
i think it could have
because over the course of of years uh... as system
began to take hold at the bestie became and yesterday
became more profit or did and and and uh... specialist war entrenched in their
system admitted even more difficult as time went back to try to reform it
you also talk about seeing some of them
talking points you helped develop repeated on television you talk about i
think at the very beginning of the book sometimes you feel that you may have
contributed to
the deaths of of of thousands of believe you actually saw
hey up
do you feel
what iming talk about that a little bit half of what are you at peace
sense with what you did this
her well you've you will
you know you can't go back and change the past right but uh... i kept him
people who could be critical of me for
having done what i'd what i did and uh... you know i i can't can't undo that
and to think and i can't recreate it either because if i didn't at if i
didn't do what i did
if i hadn't had a career i have
but i wouldn't know what i know and i wouldn't have been an insider who could
speak out
undoing something that no one else has really done and i've i'm hoping that
they may be able to make a difference just by
helping to educate people about what goes on and understand
in a way that only a fucking unfettered can do
yeah i i wrote you not really regret anyone have lost
aka allot one or uk
uh... i horror wildlife uh... because of the practice of the health insurance
industry that i helped perpetuate
i can't change that i regret and to a certain extent at the art of doing
at making a man
do you worry about your your do you think you're personally in danger
because of some of the speaking at that you're doing
naming names in many cases do you think there's a risk of retaliation
art acquired testimony that with the fact that
that uh...
concerning the most
that i think it would be politically my life
idea and i was going to be in danger
but in somewhat paranoia thoughtful just work where are we talking about here
we're queer fearing change but in fact that
something that dramatic
we really are afraid of up taking that final step
but you have been richard put up with a big money here
and then
corporations
play hardball
and they played had to wind up avenue that in the meantime you quite they have
done the passed away
so i would suppose concern
do you find yourself looking over your shoulder today
the
nyc if i think about that all the time to speak
one amet
there
other unpaid last question what do you do for health insurance now
you know i i know it and i have a lot of who works and
not gone to work here
she yet it still has been a bit i'm her dependent hotelclub
we that will be a bit
employer dates system which is really bizarre immortal
but uh... anthology keeps a child
that have benefits from it
hooked up
that we know will live long enough for to be able to to get entrenched truth be
exchanges with this
legislation will create
and that they
this employer-based system will eventually i a couple of a dinosaur i
wrote the book is that these things the authors wendell potter thanks so much
for joining us today a real pleasure
truck thanks
all right we are done