This is a rebroadcast of an interview that aired on January 5th, 2011

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Today is the first day of work for the 112th Congress, and the new majority already has big plans for the next week. On Monday House Republicans announced their intention to vote to repeal the historic health care reform legislation which passed less than one year ago. The vote is scheduled for January 12th. While Republicans are confident repeal will easily pass in the House, they do not have enough votes in the Senate, and certainly the President will not sign a repeal bill. While the debate around the healthcare bill presents the issue as a battle between socialism and capitalism, in reality the legislation benefits for-profit insurance companies while putting in place some consumer protections. The Health insurance industry in fact helped craft the bill using a combination of slick PR moves outwardly supporting reform, and behind-the scenes front groups that viciously attacked real reform through a sophisticated disinformation campaign. We know that this is the two-prong strategy employed by insurance companies because one of their own top PR people quit in disgust and spilled the beans. His name is Wendell Potter and he worked as a top PR executive for Cigna for years before resigning and speaking out. Potter tells his story and how the Insurance industry works, in his new book Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans.

GUEST: Wendell Potter, Senior Fellow on Health Care at the Center for Media and Democracy, author of Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans

Watch the video of the entire interview with Wendell Potter here: http://uprisingradio.org/home/?p=17764