Telecommunications Pricing: Theory and Practice Book

I have been following Wendell Potter with fascination since he first surfaced on Countdown and then in the long interview with Bill Moyers. It is rare indeed to find a top-level executive who will set aside his career in order to follow his conscience. Potter is such a man. I was delighted to receive an advance copy of the book through Goodreads and am pleased to review it.
It is not fun to read. I say this because of the content. The style is altogether excellent, the work of a trained journalist who moved into PR only after learning the meaning of journalism and journalistic ethics. What smarts so much in the telling is the dulling of the consciences of so many "spinners" who ignore the code of ethics of the public relstiond profession -- yes, there is one! -- for the sake of gain. Lack of conscience in the health insurance business is all the more deadly in that this is not something any of us can, ultimately, choose. We may decide to use or not to use the products of the tobacco and beverage industries, but nearly all of us will need and receive medical care and have to pay for it.
The saga of how Wendell Potter learned to believe his own spin, and then unlearned it through encounters with a free health clinic and the case of Nataline Sarkisyan forms a thread through the book and links the drier material on the history of health insurance and the grim story of attempts to reform the insurance system, only partially fulfillled in the Obama administration's legislation. Readers who are confronted with the inside story of the sleazy practices of the health insurqnce giants are likely to be more, not less, incensed at being mandated to purchase insurance from these unscrupulous sharks. With every page, I felt more and more fortunate to have made it to Medicare without disaster -- although it nearly happened to me, just before I reached Medicare age, when I suffered a ruptured appendix in a city many hundreds of miles from my company's home base and the "network" of its HMO. It took me over a year of argument to convince the administrators of the plan that mine was a medical emergency and had to be treated as "in network," as thr plan's handbook provided. The public hospital where I had received such excellent care had to wait all that time to be paid for its services.
In some ways the most riveting chapter was Potter's explanation of ERISA, the Employee Retirement Security Act of 1974. Enacted to prevent the looting of pension funds by unscrupulous owners, the act has served as shelter for insurers, giving them incentive to gamble with people's lives. The Sarkisyan case is a bitter example: if Nataline Sarkisyan had lived, her insurer would have been responsible for her care and could even have been sued for damage caused by delay in treatment. But once she was dead, the insurer -- in this case Mercedes Benz, her fathe's employer, which ran a plan administered by CIGNA, was off the hook. Cases governed by ERISA can only be adjudicated in federal court, and the remedy is limited to the provision of treatment; thus, once the patient is dead there is no remedy at all. One can only hope that readers of this book will be moved to address their senators and representatives about altering ERISA to change this situation. I know I will.
As soon as our Vermont legislature convenes in January, many of us will be at the State House to lobby for universal, single-payer healthcare, or public-option steps in that direction, asking the state to seek a waiver from the federal government to allow such an experiment. I hope Wendell Potterr's book will be required reading in Montpelier, and in state capitols throughout the country.