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A CEO’s Confession Explains Why Healthcare is Broken
It also tells us how to fix this mess.
It’s not every day that a corporate CEO decides to air their dirty laundry lies, but Wendell Potter didn’t just hang it out to dry — he set it on fire and tweeted about it.
In 2020, in a moment of public reckoning, the former health insurance executive admitted: “I must come clean about a lie I spread as a health insurance exec: We spent big $$ to push the idea that Canada’s single-payer system was awful & the U.S. system much better.”
Potter didn’t stop there. He revealed how the healthcare industry’s PR powerhouse, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), handed executives cherry-picked data and anecdotal horror stories to peddle a terrifying (and untrue) narrative to the public — Canadians wait forever for medical care. And then they die.
Never mind that Canadians don’t have to sell a kidney to pay for their kidney transplant. Remember, in Canada, there are no co-pays, deductibles, or co-insurance. Canadians receive just care, free at the point of service. Most importantly, Canadians who lose their jobs don’t lose their health insurance. Meanwhile, in the U.S., layoffs come with a bonus round of existential dread — losing healthcare coverage while already terrified of being unable to pay your bills.
