“With this history, you can rest assured that the insurance industry is up to the same dirty tricks, using the same devious PR practices it has used for many years, to kill reform this year, or even better, to shape it so that it benefits insurance companies and their Wall Street investors far more than average Americans.” Former head of corporate communications at CIGNA, Wendell Potter, the health insurance industry equivalent of Russell Crowe in The Insider, explains in Salon what his former employers are up to, and why our republic appears to be in a spot of trouble:
“During my 20 years in corporate communications and public affairs, I participated in the steady growth and influence of largely invisible persuasion — and at a time when newsrooms are shrinking and investigative journalism seems to be vanishing. The number of PR people long ago surpassed the number of working journalists in this country…The clear winners as this shift occurs are big, rich corporations and other special interests. The losers are average Americans, most of whom are completely unaware how their thoughts and actions are being manipulated to achieve corporate goals on Capitol Hill.“