My name is Wendell Potter.
I, for 20 years, was a health insurance company executive.
I ran the communications departments
of two of the largest health insurance companies
in the world.
And part of my job
was to mislead the American public.
I switched sides because
I became aware of the harm that I was doing,
the consequences of the misinformation.
The, the frankly, the lies that I and others
told to the American public
and to policymakers.
I became disgusted with what I was doing.
I came face-to-face with people who were victims
of our dysfunctional health care system,
people who were having to get care in barns
and animal stalls.
That broke my heart.
It changed me when I saw that.
My biggest regret is that,
for so many years,
I was protecting a system
that resulted in people dying prematurely,
people not getting the care that they needed.
And I say that a lot of the work
that I'm doing right now
is to make amends
for those years that I did that.
The role that I played in the playbook
was to help design it and to carry it out,
to make sure that people were confused
about our health care system.
We manufacture fear
through the playbook.
We try to make people believe that
any kind of health care reform proposals
are designed to move us towards socialism,
to have the government take over
our health care system.
Those terms are specifically chosen
because at least Americans in particular are concerned
or afraid of anything that might be socialism.
In the 1990s,
that was when I first began this work
to try to bamboozle the public,
we had a series of commercials
that were extraordinarily effective.
They featured this fictional couple
sitting around the kitchen table.
Their names were Harry and Louise.
“Having choices we don't like is no choice at all.”
And you saw them expressing concern and worry
about what might happen
if the Clinton plan was passed.
And that's just an example of how you use
fear, uncertainty and doubt
to get people to believe certain things.
And it was very effective. By the time
that campaign was over,
people were very much against the Clinton plan.
Canada is one of three countries in the world
that has a true single-payer health care system.
The other two are Cuba and North Korea.
So think about what kind of health care
you get in those countries.
We would often cite Sally Pipes' work
because she was a reliable critic
of the Canadian health care system.
The impression was that we wanted to create,
and she helped with that,
was that Canadians have to wait
endlessly for care that they need,
that patients are literally waiting
and dying on gurneys and hallways at hospitals.
That's the impression we wanted to create
in Americans' minds.
And in my old job,
I would send reporters links to some of the work
that she and her organization had done
to try to even persuade the news media
that the Canadian system is far inferior.
I was quite willing to accept that what I was saying,
what I was telling to reporters and others that,
was fair and factual information.
I became to obviously realize that that was not the case.
These companies are not honest.
I know from 20 years of working for them
that they,
as I used to do at my old job,
will say anything to try to generate goodwill
and to make the media and the public think
that they're essential and good actors.
They're not in many ways.
It makes me sad and furious, to be honest with you,
and more and more outraged that we have allowed
this system to continue -
that our policymakers, our lawmakers
have in so many ways and so often turned a blind eye
to the reality of our health care system.
We should not have a system
in which people are losing their health insurance
when they lose their jobs,
have to worry about picking up their prescriptions
and not having enough money if they do to put food on the table.
But that's the choice
that Americans have to face
every single day.
Many people cannot afford even their copayments,
their deductibles before their insurance kicks in.
So we have millions of Americans
who have filed for bankruptcy,
even Americans with insurance,
because of all they have to pay out of their own pockets
before their insurance kicks in.
It's a horrible, horrible system.
An untold number of people have died,
including people who have insurance,
because they cannot get the care that they need,
even if they're sending their insurance company
premiums every single month.
It's no assurance that they'll be able to get
the care that they need when they need it.
The insurance industry has erected
so many different barriers that keep people
from getting the care that they need.
The health insurance industry,
first of all, is completely unnecessary.
In this country,
they have assumed the role of gatekeeper.
They've seized power over the past several years,
and they call the shots.
They call the shots
when it comes to us getting the care that we need,
and they call the shots in Washington
and the state capitals
for all the money that they spend on lobbying
and through campaign donations.
So they've got a lot of politicians in their pockets.
The system can and it must be fixed.
It can be fixed if our policymakers,
particularly in Washington,
move forward to create a system that is more fair,
make sure that everyone,
regardless of ethnicity, of gender, of age,
get the care that we need when we need it.
Medicare For All is one option
that has wide support among the public.
We have a program that's been around
for more than 50 years,
that operates much more efficiently and fairly
than private insurance companies.
I started supporting Medicare For All,
frankly, when I became aware of how this
system is harming businesses in this country.
I've talked to so many business owners
and business leaders
about how our current system
has just become unaffordable for them.
So we need to have a system
in which everyone has equal access to care,
everyone is covered,
no one is left out.
That we need to have a system
that costs far less
than the current system.
And we can achieve that through either
Medicare For All
or moving in that direction
with a viable public option
and some other reforms
that would curb the power and influence
of the insurance industry.