Check out Blue Arkansas for a fascinating interview with Wendell Potter, chief corporate spokesman for CIGNA before becoming a whistleblower and health insurance reform advocate. Here’s how Potter describes his “transformation from insurance company insider to whistleblower and advocate of reform.”

Well, about 2 yrs before I left I began worrying about some of the plans the health insurance companies were trying to force on us. They were trying to push a higher burden of the cost onto the public and I knew that people in states like Arkansas and Tennessee where I come from couldn’t take that financial burden. Also, I was not happy about having to be a part of killing healthcare reform. I’d been a part of that effort before and I didn’t want to do it again. But what really got me was a trip I took to visit my parents in 2003 in Virginia and I heard about this event called Healthcare Expedition. So I said, alright, let’s check this out and I was just stunned by what I saw. There were poor people standing in the rain to get medical treatment from volunteer doctors in animal stalls. It was a real eye opener. The desperate straits these people were in hadn’t hit me until then and I wasn’t proud of the job I was doing.

How do insurance industry executives live with themselves while this is going on? According to Potter, “[i]n the insurance industry, especially executive positions, you are totally isolated from people and their needs” and instead are “focused on trying to satisfy Wall Street.” That’s not a big surprise, of course, but it’s powerful coming from a former industry insider-turned-whistleblower. With regard to health insurance industry talking points on health care reform, Potter says that they are largely “designed to scare people with regards to the public option.” Potter adds, “It’s disturbing to see this kind of misinformation being spread by, say, a senator from Arkansas.”

Yes, it certainly is, which is why FDL has put together this ad and is asking for your help in paying to run the ad in Arkansas. Thanks, and great work by Blue Arkansas!