Welcome!
HEALTH CARE un-covered is a newsletter to call attention to out-of-control profiteering in U.S. health care and what that means to everyday Americans. And, importantly, to identify potential solutions.
Our mission:
to uncover the facts and figures big insurers and health-care providers try to hide from us and then connect the dots,
to tell the stories of people who are going broke and dying prematurely, even if they have health insurance;
to provide information to lawmakers, employers, and reporters – and you – that we never get from industry lobbyists and flacks like I used to be; and
to identify and advocate for solutions.
Wendell’s Bio
I’ve been called the health insurance industry’s worst nightmare. Time magazine called me the ideal whistleblower. Bill Moyers called me a straight shooter. Senator Jay Rockefeller said I outdid Russell Crowe’s character in The Insider when I testified before his Senate committee. Michael Moore called me the Daniel Ellsberg of corporate America.
I came out of the hills of East Tennessee and went on to become a newspaper reporter, Congressional correspondent, press secretary, world’s fair lobbyist and country recruiter, spokesman for a chain of banks shut down by the feds, partner in a PR firm, insurance industry flack, and corporate turncoat.
More recently I’ve been a New York Times bestselling author, health care and campaign finance reform advocate, and authority tackling corporate and special interest propaganda. I lead two health care reform advocacy nonprofits: the Center for Health and Democracy and Business Leaders for Health Care Transformation.
I have testified many times before Congress, and have been on TV a lot (Rachel Maddow and Anderson Cooper have interviewed me, and I once sat on the Fox & Friends couch). I’ve also written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The Guardian, Newsweek, The Nation, the American Journal of Public Health, the British Medical Journal and a bunch of other publications.
My books include Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out On How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care And Deceiving Americans; Obamacare: What’s In It For Me--What Everyone Needs To Know About The Affordable Care Act; and Nation On The Take, How Big Money Corrupts Our Democracy and What We Can Do About It (all published by Bloomsbury). My latest book, For Want of a Dentist: The Rise of the Dental Therapy Movement in Tribal Nations and the U.S., was published by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation in 2021.
Follow me on Twitter @wendellpotter
