Thread by @wendellpotter

Get this, my former health insurance industry colleagues are trying to intimidate lawmakers again - this time in Connecticut - because the state government has the gall to consider a public health plan that could compromise some of the industry’s massive profits. It's despicable.

If I were still in my old job as head of comms at Cigna, I bet I would have had to write a self-serving letter to Connecticut’s governor – signed by the country’s biggest insurer CEOs – implying that they'd consider taking jobs out of the state if they don’t get their way.

And that’s just what happened. The PR chiefs of those companies wrote to CT’s governor & tried to intimidate him. This is the kind of stuff that made me leave the industry & become a whistleblower. I couldn't stomach misleading Americans so a few rich people could get even richer

As CT State Comptroller Kevin Lembo said in response to the letter, “When will enough be enough?” As someone whose name was on every one of Cigna’s earnings releases for 10 years, I know the answer is NEVER. See Lembo's letter below:

Consider this: Cigna CEO David Cordani, whom I used to work with, made $79 million in 2020. That’s not a typo. That ONE man got a $60 million bump in pay during COVID while an untold number of Connecticut residents lost their paychecks and insurance due to the pandemic.

The same week the CEOs sent that letter to Gov. Lamont, UnitedHealth, the US’s biggest insurer, announced that its profits for Q1 2021 were up 44% from last year. That’s really “impressive,” since 2020 was the most profitable year in UnitedHealth’s history ($15.4 billion).

And United pulled that off while losing more than 725,000 policyholders! Wall Street was so impressed that UnitedHealth’s stock price hit an all-time high last week. That alone made UnitedHealth President Dirk McMahon, one of the letter signers, considerably richer.

The bottom line? A public option in Connecticut could save lives. It will provide needy residents decent coverage, or an alternative to horrible corporate plans. And as a small state, it won’t even do any material damage to those companies' hefty bottom lines.

For these greedy health insurance companies – like the ones I used to work for – money is like good whiskey was to Mark Twain.

Too much is barely enough.