[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/07/02/acosta.insurance.insider.art.jpg caption="Wendell Potter is the former chief spokesman for health insurance giant Cigna."]
By CNN's Jim Acosta & Bonney Kapp
Last year, Wendell Potter stepped down from his post as the chief spokesman for the health insurance giant, Cigna. Potter tells CNN he is finished with defending an industry he calls “beholden to Wall Street.”
At a hearing last week before the Senate Commerce Committee, the former vice president of corporate communications at Cigna testified, “I know from personal experience that members of Congress and the public have good reason to question the honesty and trustworthiness of the insurance industry."
The committee’s chairman, West Virginia’s democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller told Potter, “you are better than Russell Crowe on ‘The Insider,’” referring to the award-winning 1999 film about cigarette company executive Jeffrey Wigand who blew the lid on the tobacco industry’s practices.
In his testimony and in an interview with CNN, Potter described how underwriters at his former company would drive small businesses with expensive insurance claims to dump their Cigna policies. Industry executives refer to the practice as "purging," Potter said.
“When that business comes up for renewal the underwriters jack the rates up so much the employer has no choice but to drop insurance,” Potter said.
CNN obtained a transcript of a 2008 Cigna conference call with investors in which company executives use the term “purge.”
But in an email to CNN, Cigna spokesman Chris Curran denied the company engages in “purging.”
“We do not practice that. We will offer rates that are reflective of the competitive group health insurance market. We always encourage our clients to compare our proposed rates to those available from other carriers," Curran said.
Potter started thinking about leaving Cigna in 2007 after he visited a medical charity event held at a Virginia fairground.
"It was almost like an electrical jolt," Potter said.
At the event, Potter took pictures of doctors offering free health care to the uninsured.
"The volunteer doctors were seeing patients in barns, people in animal stalls,” Potter said. “It changed it for me.”
He says he finally decided to quit after Cigna’s controversial handling of an insurance claim made by the family of California teenager, Nataline Sarkysian.
In 2007, the Sarkysian family made repeated public appeals at news conferences for Cigna to approve a liver transplant for the 17-year-old, who was suffering from leukemia. Cigna initially declined to cover the treatment, then reversed its decision.
Sarkysian died shortly after the company’s reversal.
As Cigna’s spokesman during the controversy, Potter had no role in the decision to deny coverage. But he was inundated with angry phone calls from the public.
“After she died my voice mail and my email inbox were just filled with messages from people who were just outraged, " Potter said.
Now a senior fellow on health care for the public watchdog group, “Center for Media and Democracy,” Potter is speaking out on efforts to reform his former industry.
He supports legislation that would give Americans the option of joining a government health care plan.
Potter is also taking aim at some of the TV commercials aired by groups opposed to reform.
One such ad caught Potter’s eye. Run by the conservative organization, Patients United Now, the ad claims “now Washington wants to bring Canadian-style health care to the U.S."
"Sometimes you'll see misleading information. And sometimes you'll see outright lies, like that (ad) is," Potter said referring to the spot.
Patients United Now spokeswoman Amy Menefee disagrees.
"We're not saying there's a Canada health care act of 2009,” Menefee said. “It is a trend. It's trending in that direction."
Potter notes that the leading proposals for health care in Congress do not seek to set up Canadian-style health care in the U.S. He says claims that reform would lead to “rationing” of care are missing his point.
“What we have is rationing by corporate executives who are beholden to Wall Street. And it happens all the time," Potter said.