Wendell Potter, the former Public Relations Executive of the giant health insurance corporation Cigna, now frequently speaks out against the current health care system at different cities in the U.S., advocating for meaningful health care reform. On March 26, Potter came to Denver to give a speech at a local Christian church. The reason that Potter felt compelled to speak out was in part to the circumstance that the current health care system has driven insurers to pursue maximum profits for their Wall Street investors and because the collusion between insurance companies with the mass media, which has been misleading people about health care reform. Potter employed narrative storytelling to reveal some common tactics he saw applied by insurers to their policyholders when working in the health insurance industry. At the end of his speech, Potter emphasized the significance of rejecting the scare tactics, which tends to keep people in their comfort zone and prevent them from taking actions supporting health care reform. By revealing the sickness of current health care system and indicating the urgency of health care reform, he sincerely called upon his audience to stand up to call for governmental regulations and to take actions to stop the misbehaviors and corruption of insurers.
Potter gave several anecdotes that had impacted on his professional life, including a real story that prompted his decision to quit his high paid job as an executive of Public Relations at Cigna. He shared a girl’s tragedy handled by him that was caused by the insurer’s self-interest and profit driven character. Potter emphasized this moving story as his defining moment in his life, which led him to stand up against huge insurance companies with courage. In this real story, when a girl from California got cancer and needed help from her insurance company Cigna to pay for a liver transplant, Cigna denied her at first due to the cost, categorizing the surgical operation as experimental. However, following outraged expressed by people from the girl’s hometown of an organized protest, Cigna reluctantly changed its decision and agreed to pay for the cost. As the executive president of Public Relations at Cigna, Potter handled the case as instructed by his CEOs. Though running counter to his conscience, he followed the company’s policy and let the people know that the reason Cigna decided to help pay for the cost of the transfer was due to the company’s sympathy and kind heart. However, the girl passed away after battling with her cancer while waiting for the insurance company’s decision to pay for the operation. As the public spokesman for Cigna, Potter felt responsible for the girl’s death long after she passed away even while he continued Cigna’s charade.
Potter recalled travelling domestically and internationally in his company’s wasteful and extravagant private jets. All the while he realized that every dollar spent on the luxury could have been spent on patients saving lives. Logos and ethos in Potter’s message interact to produce coherence and consistency for the overall purpose of exhorting his audience.
Cigna is a representative of many profit-driven giant insurers; the girl’s premiums are one of thousands of hundreds premium dollars wasted on executives who pursue luxurious life style. Similarly, this tragedy is also a representative of common cases that insurance companies would frequently do to their policyholders who need their insurance companies to honor policies. The speaker chose this girl’s story as the representative to appeal for more sympathy from people’s common feelings for girls and is aimed to rhetorically gain empathy from his audience. Though the average age of his audience could have been a constraint on the rhetorical situation, Potter took advantage of this situation by letting his audience identify themselves as parents and grandparents that allows them to feel empathy for the unbearable lost of the girl’s family. As for the audience themselves, they are and will be at the age that requires trustful and dependable health insurance coverage. The girl’s story cruelly revealed the possible outcomes that would happen to them when in need of health insurance coverage. People logically assume that paying to have insurance will make them feel financially secure when emergencies happen. In contrast, when people revisit the girl’s situation, they pay to get nothing but mistrust towards insurers and unfairness.
After he shared this story, he expressed that he ran counter into his crisis of conscience and could not help crying when he mentioned that the girl died due to the lack of immediate medical treatment. He felt a call from his heart asking him to stop working for profit driven cooperatives but beginning speaking out against insurance companies that using unethical dirty tricks to their policyholders. By publicly revealing the tricks to against insurers as an insider, he advocates a change of the current health care system, which has led insurers to operate to maximize profits for their CEOs and shareholders. Knowing most of his audience is also both politically and socially advocating health care reform, he shared his defining moment that he quit his considerably high pay job and urged people to follow their hearts doing right things without fear.
By sharing his decision making at the turning point of his career life, Potter developed his character in his speech. The call he heard had given him courage not to fear about any outcomes. It was difficult to make such a decision that would lead him into mid-age crisis—having to take care of all family expenses—as well as endangering his life and his family’s safety. He created himself a courageous but not self-interest or greedy persona, of who overcame his fear of safety and walked away from his about 20 years career life and salary. In addition to this character, his rich experiences with the health care industry give him competence that greatly builds up his credibility in front of his audience. Standing up against to the health care system and speaking to his audience at a Christian church, he emphasized the call he heard that urged him to do something right. Though the religious beliefs of his audience could have been another constraint of his speech in this situation, once again, instead, he took an advantage of it by letting his audience feel that they have undeniable obligations responding to their god’s call that tells them not to fear about getting out of the comfort zone but to be on the same side of frontline with him.
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