David Whelan [3] blogs about the health care business for Forbes.com, and he's published a review [4] of Wendell Potter's [5] forthcoming new tell-all book about the health insurance industry, Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans [6]. After twenty years as head of corporate public relations [7] for two of the country's biggest for-profit health insurers, Wendell gave up his six-figure salary and cushy life as an insurance executive and decided he had to start telling people how the for-profit insurance industry manipulates the government and sticks it to Americans.

Apparently too excited about Deadly Spin to wait until he's read the entire thing, Whelan is giving a blow-by-blow review of the book as he reads it. His September 17 blog covers the first half of the book, in which Wendell describes his life inside the industry and how he got disillusioned with it, the "skimpy" products insurance companies push on subscribers and gives a glimpse into his awakening -- the moment at which he realized what the industry was doing was wrong and was harming the country.

Wendell has been called the health insurance industry's "worst nightmare," so naturally we are proud to have him here at CMD. Pre-publication copies of the book have been sent out to health writers. The book won't be available to the general public until November 9, but copies can be pre-ordered at a discount at Amazon.com [6].

If the pre-publication reviews are any indication, it could be quite a transformational work.