Former CIGNA Exec Has Stinging Words For Health Insurers

A former media relations executive from CIGNA turned dramatically against health insurers at a Senate committee hearing Wednesday, June 24, calling the industry an "untrustworthy" partner for its customers and "duplicitous" in blocking meaningful health care reform.

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Jun 25, 2009 8:15 AM - From The Hartford Courant:

"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 spoke at a Washington hearing of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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