PRAD 575 Book Review : Deadly Spin Susan Fleming Get sick, go to the doctor, pull out a card

and a twenty. Its a system weve come to take for granted, yet a system thats subject to frequent backlash - the American healthcare system. In Deadly Spin, Wendell Potters expose of health insurers in America, gives us even more cause for outrage. At the heart of what is painted as a corrupt and perverse business health insurance is (not surprisingly) the holy grail of money. Believe it or not, the health insurance industry is not about preserving health. Its about earnings per share (EPS) and medical loss ratio (MLR). New technology, new cures, new hope. Thats what healthcare is about, right? Maybe for researchers and scientists, caregivers and doctors, but for insurance CEOs, its about spin. Potter takes us through the playbook for manipulating public opinion. And he should know; he was the head PR executive for CIGNA, one of the handful of large, publicly held health insurance companies in America. Now turned against big insurance, Potter takes us through what finally turned things on their ear for him. His is a shocking and gut-wrenching tale of the unethical motives of insurance. By combining his first-hand experience in the insurance industry with references to the history of spin and peppering in real life examples of the shady practices employed by big health insurance, Potter gives us an utterly convincing portrayal. Moreover, this is supplemented with 151 yes 151! sources, including The Wall Street Journal and The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) and works such as Mein Kampf and How to Lie with Statistics,. The practice of spin dates way back. Potter takes us back to a document developed by the Institute for Propoganda Analysis in the 1930s. The Institute defined PR ploys as fear, transfer, testimonials and glittering generalities. And Potter shows us all of them! He takes us back in time to the healthcare reform Clinton era. How could we forget Harry and Louise? Big insurance dug their heels in on that one. Fast forward to 2010 a completely different story, right? Enter the PR charm offensive. The American Association of Health plans swoops in and comes to the table with solutions. Really? Nah. Enter: fear, transfer, testimonials and glittering generalities. What they really wanted was the insurance mandate. An elaborate strategy of recruiting third party advocates and running front groups to instill fear in the American public worked before why not use it again? So it goes they got their insurance mandate. Provided it stands, more than 34 million uninsured will be forced into the insurance system. Think EPS and MLR. As if thats not enough, Potter lifts the covers on the unscrupulous practices of big insurance. Any drain on EPS is bad. If you get sick retroactive cancellation (known in the industry as recission). If, as a small business, your MLR stinks dumped (known in the

industry as purging)! Every day, big wheel medical directors at big insurance companies call the shots on our health care. These same medical directors have the added incentive of stock options. You guessed it the value of those options are tied to the MLR. It all adds up to recission, purging, denying, pushing people out of hospitals and shifting costs away from the insurer to the policyholder. We are reminded in the book that the very people who play down the issue of the uninsured are the same people who are the source of the problem. Potter gives us the undeniable proof that these tactics work for big insurance - the industry-wide MLR of 80% - down from 95% in 1983. That means that only 80% of premiums collected go to covering our healthcare. Thats a 15% increase in profit to big insurance over the past 28 years. And so it goes with big insurance pushing the boundaries to meet Wall Streets profit expectations. And we thought it was about meeting the medical needs of policyholders. Potter gives us a glimpse into his own angst about the spin tactics of big insurance. Imagine being a PR executive for big insurance and sitting in a screening of Michael Moores Sicko. Intended to be a major expose of the health insurance industry, it gathered some initial steam, but the flames fanned out quickly, much to the delight of big insurance. Of course, the spin machine helped the process along. Sicko is the epiphany that marks the beginning of Potters doubts and fuels a growing distaste for the constant stress of spin. This distaste comes screaming to a crescendo with the tragic death of a 17 year old girl needing a transplant. Contrary to the spin creating by Potters hand, the fact was that the medial forced coverage for the procedure. But they were a day late and a dollar short. The young womans health sped downhill after CIGNA relented, and she died. For any CEO who wants the ultimate handbook on how to create spin, this is it. The book is full of concrete examples where spin was used effectively. Refer to the to-do list toward the back of this shocker to learn how to run a communications campaign, what to make sure your PR firm does and to see the tried and true recipe for spin. Learn how spin came to the rescue of big tobacco and big oil. If it works there, why not copy a page for the playbook of one of the most powerful industries in America - healthcare? This powerful expose is a metaphor for the world we live in today, where the burden is on the American public to distinguish real news from corporate spin. As a former executive in a related industry, I can relate to Potters revelations. The frightening thing is this: spin has been part of the fabric of the culture since Blue Cross/Blue Shield started the trend of publicly held insurance companies. The horror stories continue and big insurance continues to spin. In the meantime, our healthcare system continues to suffer. You need to know that the United States ranks 47th in life expectancy at birth another shocking piece of information contained in Deadly Spin. I have to ask is it any wonder?