With health care playing a prominent role in Congress once again, I headed off to my local mega book store to pick up a copy of Deadly Spin. Wendell Potter, the former Vice President of Corporate Communications (Read: Head of public relations) for CIGNA, wrote this book as an expose on the health insurance industry. Unfortunately for the reader, the expose is buried among a meandering history of public relations, health care, and personal rehabilitation. While it is refreshing to see someone blow the whistle on an industry that has driven up the cost of health care to astronomic levels while simultaneously reducing the quality of care, it was tough to stomach his outrage after a long and lucrative career of defending the very practices he now condemns.
If you're interested in reading a firsthand account of how the insurance industry killed health care reform under President Clinton and how they sabotaged the final bill that Congress passed last year, then Deadly Spin is worth reading. If you're looking for a well organized and entertaining read, then I would suggest picking up something else instead.
