Public Relations Turn Around

This is an amazing public relations story!

Wendell Potter, former head of Public Relations for CIGNA, one of the nation's largest health insurers, is now delivering a message much different than the one he delivered while on the company's payroll.

With almost 20 years inside the health insurance industry, Wendell Potter saw for-profit insurers hijack our health care system and put profits before patients. Now, he speaks with Bill Moyers about how those companies are standing in the way of health care reform.

According to the Bill Moyers Journal "...Wendell Potter tells Bill Moyers why he left his successful career as the head of Public Relations for CIGNA, one of the nation's largest insurers, and decided to speak out against the industry. "I didn't intend to [speak out], until it became really clear to me that the industry is resorting to the same tactics they've used over the years, and particularly back in the early '90s, when they were leading the effort to kill the Clinton plan."

Good public relations means knowing the story behind the story and this is a classic example. Public relations specialists hear and see much more than meets the public eye. We have to in order to understand what drives the message.

And then we get to make choices about how we will handle that information.

Is this "Too little too late?" or a case of "Better late than never?"

I'll let you be the judge of that.
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