🙏🏻 A Gratitude Post to Wendell Potter 🙏🏻

I’ve spent 25 years calling out the fraud that is the American healthcare system.

Wendell Potter’s confessions in New York Magazine don’t surprise me. (Source link in the comments) They confirm everything I’ve known since the day I became a patient and since the day we became friends way back in 2012 when hey keynoted Stupid Cancer's 2012 OMG! Cancer Summit for Young Adults in Las Vegas — and tore the house down.

Everything you know if you’ve ever been denied care, stuck on hold, or forced to go public just to survive.

Wendell helped build the machine. He shaped the message. He led the charge to spin denial of care as “policy.” He ran PR to discredit critics like Michael Moore. He watched a teenage girl die after her transplant was denied—because it was cheaper. And for years, he lived with it.

That’s not a system gone wrong.

That’s a system doing what it was built to do.

I’ve lived on the other side of it. I’ve heard from parents begging for coverage while their kid fought to breathe. I’ve seen survivors forced to crowdfund basic meds. I’ve watched people suffer through months of appeals and paperwork for treatments they should’ve gotten on day one. This isn’t rare. This is the rule.

The people who make the rules know it. Most are quiet.

Wendell decided not to be and has since become the badass he was destined to become. (And his books and Substack are appointment reading so please be sure to check them out)

If you work in insurance, pharma, health tech, or policy, you need to read this piece. Then ask yourself what side you’re on. Are you helping people—or helping your team hit metrics? Are you disrupting the system—or just automating the same abuse?

Don’t tell me you care about patients if you can’t pick up the phone and override a denial. Don’t say equity matters if you’re still working with PBMs. Don’t call yourself a changemaker if your biggest risk is liking a post like this.

Wendell is a hero. He told the truth. Bravo again, my friend.