I'm the former insurance industry insider now speaking out about how big for-profit insurers have hijacked our health care system and turned it into a giant ATM for Wall Street investors, and how the industry is using its massive wealth and influence to determine what is (and is not) included in the health care reform legislation members of Congress are now writing.
Wendell Potter came to the Center for Media and Democracy in May as an admirer of our work exposing corporate front groups, lobbyists and PR manipulators. He should know, he was one of the best PR executives in the health insurance business, CIGNA's Vice President of Corporate Communications until he had a major change of heart.
Today Wendell is CMD's Senior Fellow on Health Care, testifying before the US Senate Commerce Committee. His passion is health care reform and his expertise is exposing how the powerful industry he once helped run is manipulating and managing the health care reform debate raging among policy makers, the public and in the media.
Submitted by Anne Landman on
A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine reveals that life and health insurance companies in the U.S., Canada and Great Britain invest heavily in tobacco companies. Tobacco use is a major cause of fatal lung diseases and cancer, and is known to elevate the risk for heart attack and stroke.
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
On May 28, industry executives met "to devise a public relations and lobbying strategy to block government bans" of bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical found in cans and plastic containers.
Submitted by Anne Landman on
The National Cancer Institute has awarded a five-year, $2.7 million grant to Northeastern University Law School to research how the tobacco, fast food and sweetened beverage industries use and exploit the concepts of "personal responsibility" and "choice" to avoid liability and litigation for diseases that result from use of their products.
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
Conservatives for Patients' Rights, a group bankrolled by Richard Scott and promoted by CRC Public Relations, is going beyond its "ominous ads warning that President Barack Obama
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
"The ingenuity of the food manufacturers and marketers never ceases to amaze me," remarked author Michael Pollan. "They can turn any critique into a new way to sell food." Marketers are appropriating language from the "eat local" or "locavore" movement, which encourages support for small farms, sustainable practices and better treatment of animals.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
The Wall Street Journal has published a revealing story about one of the seamier sides of the drug industry's marketing campaigns: paying patients to offer testimonials about their drugs. As health industry observer Merrill Goozner explains, the story came to light because a "celebrity patient" had a "falling out with his corporate sponsor, Bristol-Myers Squibb.
Submitted by Anne Landman on
The major American cigarette manufacturers, including Altria and Reynolds American, have lost their appeal of a 2006 Federal court ruling that
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
A class-action lawsuit charging major tobacco companies and a public relations firm with a "decades-long campaign of deceptive advertising and misleading statements" can proceed, ruled the California Supreme Court.
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