Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out On How Corporate PR is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans, by Wendell Potter.

Maybe you’re thinking, why in the world would I want to read a book with a title like THAT during a pandemic?!

Well, here’s why.

Deadly Spin was published in 2010. Yet the issues remain the same. The pandemic has opened our eyes in ways we couldn’t see before how broken our health care system already was, if rising health care premiums and decreasing coverage hadn’t already given one a sense something was wrong.

In our house we’ve absolutely experienced this, when our employer-provided coverage abruptly changed a little over a year ago in the attempt to bring down costs (for the employer, not for us).

Learning the rules of the new coverage and getting help when we needed it was exhausting and frustrating. We had to leave doctors who had been part of our lives for years. Forget getting straight answers ahead of time about what would be covered by insurance and what costs we would be responsible for.

Rising health care costs touch us in ways we might not have even thought of. Two months ago our car insurance premiums went up by $50 a month. When I called to ask why, I was told that the rising cost of ER care and the estimated cost of care for uninsured and under-insured drivers had gone up. That means because so many people can’t afford adequate health insurance, my CAR insurance premiums are going up by $600 a year.

And there’s the time I was at work and accepted a confused patient who had been transferred from another hospital. We routinely ask “Do you know where you are?” of patients to assess their level of awareness. When asked, the patient thought she was still at the hospital she had transferred from. When I told here where she was, her first words were a chilling, “I can’t be here. My insurance won’t pay for it.”

In many ways, reading Deadly Spin was a relief. We know something is wrong. We may know who we think is responsible. Potter tells us the backstory of what’s been going on and how things got to be the way they are now.

While the book is primarily about for-profit health insurance providers, the game is much bigger than that. Maybe you’ve sat through a buggy Zoom call recently and wished you could call your internet provider and threaten to switch to a different company if they didn’t open up the bandwidth… but there are no other internet providers in your area… Potter addresses this overarching trend of bigger companies, more control, and fewer choices.

Maybe you wonder why people are still allowed to smoke in public parks in your area. Big Tobacco and their PR campaigns are almost certainly to blame for that, Potter explains in the final section, which opens up the PR playbook for consumers to see how big companies keep things just the way they want them.

Maybe, like me, you never considered single payer health insurance to be a viable option. Since when has the government done anything better than the private sector? You might say, looking out at the potholes on your street or the failing public school system in your area. But after you read Deadly Spin, you may be thinking, how can the government possibly do things worse than they’re being done right now?

Deadly Spin doesn’t tell us how to fix it. Potter isn’t preaching for single payer health coverage, nor is he demanding we dissolve our current system completely. He is asking us as consumers to be very careful about any message we receive from the media about what to believe.

I’ve heard this message before.

Growing up, my mom taught us, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” It was a line frequently quoted in our house. If something is offered for free, you or someone else is paying for it.

My dad told me from as early as I can remember to receive any information I get from the outside world with a critical eye. Everyone has an angle, and most people don’t present their arguments with a disclaimer about their motives.

Naturally, Potter has angle, too. He is clearly doing penance for the years he spent spinning the news in favor of for-profit health insurance. He doesn’t beat around the bush about his responsibility or why he’s writing. But I believe he is telling a story we all need to hear.

Whether or not you grew up looking for spin in the media, you may, like me, not have realized how very deep that spin can go and how far-reaching its message can be.

In the end, Potter’s goal is the same as my parents: He asks us to listen critically to the messages we are being presented with. Don’t accept everything at face value.

The story he tells on the way there about how big, for-profit corporations operate and their relationship to the media, is a fascinating one, and well worth the read.

If you’re feeling helpless right now, forced to stay at home while it feels the world is falling apart, wondering how we could have gotten here – this book, at ten years old, provides some insight.