The Jordan Harbinger Show
1151: Wendell Potter | Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans
Thu, 08 May 2025
Former healthcare executive Wendell Potter reveals how insurance giants sacrifice patient care for profits and deploy deceptive tactics to fight reform.Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1151What We Discuss with Wendell Potter:Wendell Potter was a healthcare insurance executive at Cigna and Humana, and became a whistleblower after witnessing Americans seeking healthcare at a fairground in animal stalls, revealing how profit motives override patient care.Insurance companies prioritize shareholder value over patient needs, with executives compensated primarily in stock, directly incentivizing them to deny claims and care to maximize profits.Companies create "front groups" with misleading names like "Healthcare America" to manipulate public opinion against healthcare reform, using fear tactics to protect industry profits.When denied coverage, patients should appeal decisions, enlist their doctors' help, and consider becoming a "squeaky wheel" through media attention, as companies often reverse denials when facing public scrutiny.There is growing bipartisan support for healthcare reform and breaking up massive healthcare conglomerates. By understanding your rights, documenting communications, and persistently appealing denials, you can better navigate the system while supporting meaningful change.And much more...And if you're still game to support us, please leave a review here — even one sentence helps! Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course!Subscribe to our once-a-week Wee Bit Wiser newsletter today and start filling your Wednesdays with wisdom!Do you even Reddit, bro? Join us at r/JordanHarbinger!This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors:The Cybersecurity Tapes: thecybersecuritytapes.comDesign.com: Free trial: design.com/jordanBetterHelp: 10% off first month: betterhelp.com/jordanShopify: 3 months @ $1/month (select plans): shopify.com/jordanHomes.com: Find your home: homes.comWant to hear a conversation with an ex-royal/ex-SEAL who fights to end human trafficking and illegal organ harvesting? Check out episode 868 with Remi Adeleke!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What does Wendell Potter reveal about the healthcare system?
Good for you, Jordan, with a huge podcast. What about for people who don't do media for a living and have success internationally with a giant footprint? oh, well, you're just out of luck. My kids get to live and yours are screwed because you're an engineer somewhere. That hardly seems fair.
And what it also shows is they'll reverse the denial because they know it's bullshit and they know it's unfair. And they go, wow, this makes us look like the assholes that we actually are.
We should probably say that this was an administrative error and turn it around, but this is an exception to the rule and we can afford to do it only because, wow, are people pissed off at us and that's gonna reflect poorly in the stock price or we're gonna have to spend a lot of time fighting it in the media or it's gonna come up in another interview when our CEO is interviewed by Squawk Box or whatever.
If that's what has to get done, it's even worse because it's like, yeah, we're doing bad stuff, We hope that we can cover it up, but when it does leak out, we'll just make it look like an accident and then go right back to doing the exact same thing to everybody else who couldn't get their name in the paper.
It's exactly right, because the vast majority of us don't get our names in the paper. We don't know you. We don't know how to get on your show. We don't know how to do these kinds of things. It's only the occasional ones that really break through that can get a reporter interested in taking your case and making a call on your behalf.
And they get away with this day in and day out because people don't know how to be a squeaky wheel. I say, give it a go. Do the best you can. But that's hard. It's hard to do that. And you're facing such odds. And I always encourage people to never take no as your first answer. always begin an appeal process. But the industry makes it so damn difficult.
A lot of people don't know that they have rights to appeal. They just assume it's going to be such an ordeal or they feel so lousy that they don't do it. As a consequence, a small percentage of people actually fight back. They never file an appeal. They don't become the squeaky wheel. And they suffer and in many cases die early.
It's the way it is. Tell me about the lobbying and the politics. What is AstroTurfing? What are you creating here with these sort of front groups to be against policies you don't like if you're an insurance company?
You're essentially inventing groups that purport to be consumer organizations or patient organizations that are nothing of the kind, but you name them in certain ways to make people think they're legitimate. One in particular that comes to mind that I was a part of, we called it Healthcare America. We created it for two reasons. One was...
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Chapter 2: How do insurance companies prioritize profits over care?
Chapter 3: What are the deceptive tactics used by insurance companies?
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Chapter 6: How does the insurance system manipulate public opinion?
If you can't remember the name of a sponsor or you can't find the code, email us jordan at jordanharbinger.com. We're happy to surface codes for you because it's that important that you support those who support the show. Now for the rest of my conversation with Wendell Potter. It sounds like big tobacco all over again. These front groups that you'd created, it's interesting, right?
Your industry, your former industry, I should say, completely lacks credibility. So you really need these front groups to message for you because nobody freaking trusts you anymore. It's interesting how these companies sort of whip up what sounds like mostly kind of older peoples. If you tell my parents that their healthcare is going to suffer in some way, they're going to be really upset about it.
They're the ones who actually call their congressmen when something is wrong. I'm like, wow, people do that? I thought that was just something that you hear on the internet.
right pharma insurance politics tobacco that's what y'all have in common is nobody trusts you so you have to be like organization for a more secure america secure for what well we're talking about the shareholders but nobody has to know that we mean secure and and it sounds like something you should vote for okay it's like when you look at a the ballot and it's fair education america and it's like this group is just a bunch of old people who want to pay less taxes no
How is that fair? What are you talking about? It's just a bunch of crap. I'm a little bit fired up because it's really making me angry just reviewing all this stuff all over again, these charm offensives, and you get a shady talk show host like Rush Limbaugh who did untold damage and you just have them parrot your bullshit for you for money.
Exactly. You are able to throw money at influential folks to get them to carry your water for you. You mentioned the tobacco industry. That was a playbook that we followed, chapter and verse. And part of it is to form these front groups. Because if your industry has no credibility, you've got to have some outfit. And some allies, too. They will go to organizations like the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce and others that people hold with greater respect and believe are credible organizations that represent small businesses. And I can assure you the U.S. Chamber... It's not quite that. We worked with the U.S. Chamber and a lot of big organizations. We wanted to ally with them and let them carry our water for us because we couldn't do it ourselves.
What about the polls and survey data? You mentioned this in the book. Essentially, they select certain people in a certain way and get the results that they want. Tell me how this works.
Yeah, we were always constantly surveying people to find out what they were thinking about public policy as it pertains to health care. We would want to make sure that we understood how susceptible they were to agree with the Michael Moores of the world. How likely are they to say that we need to go to a single-payer health care system.
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