How does a magazine copy editor get former executives to reveal the unsavory details of the U.S. health insurance industry?
For Chris Stanton, an editor at New York Magazine who also writes about culture, politics and health insurance, the answer is twofold: First, be prepared for the unexpected, and second, have good sources. Or at least one solid source: Wendell Potter, who was a health insurance executive before he became a whistleblower. Potter introduced Stanton to three other former insurance administrators. Like Potter, all three had quit the highest ranks of the health insurance business in disgust.
As a former PR professional for two large health insurers, Humana and Cigna, Potter is the author of “Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans” (Bloomsbury, 2010). Of Potter’s book, Bloomsbury says, “A behind-the-scenes look at how a huge portion of our absurd health care spending actually bankrolls a propaganda campaign and lobbying effort focused on protecting one thing: profits.”
No surprise, then, that Stanton addressed those same themes in his article, “The confessions of insurance executives,” which New York published March 28.
‘Stomach-churning encounters with greed’
In his nut graph, Stanton wrote: “In their collective decades of work across the health-care sector, each of the four former executives I spoke to for this story, including Potter, arrived at the same conclusion: Patients’ needs are fundamentally at odds with insurers’ financial incentives and the ever-growing demands of Wall Street. All described stomach-churning encounters with greed that prompted them not only to leave the country’s for-profit health insurance industry but to question its premise.”
Later, he quoted Potter: “I’ll assure you that the least important stakeholders are the people who are enrolled in their health plans. They’re at the bottom of the pile.”
Stanton hatched the story idea while reading Potter’s newsletter, “HEALTH CARE un-covered” on Substack. While Potter writes many of the entries, he also has guest contributors, some of whom had worked in health insurance and were trying to reform it from the outside, Stanton said. “Each one of them had experienced their own crisis of conscience at one point or another,” he said in an interview.
In midtown Manhattan, fate intervened
In early December, Stanton had an idea in the back of his mind to profile Potter and others who left health insurance jobs in disgust. But early on the morning of Dec. 4, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was murdered in midtown Manhattan. Stanton’s editor called about a week later, asking, “‘What do you got? How can we tackle this story from the health insurance side?” Stanton said.
Another New York reporter was collecting background on the suspected killer, Luigi Mangione. After Trump took office in January, the story was moved to the back burner, Stanton said. “But I was chipping away at it the whole time,” he explained. “The focus just became less about the immediate fallout from the shooting. Instead, we made the framing more evergreen.”
Five days after the murder, Mangione was arrested in Altoona, Pa. On April 17, a federal grand jury indicted Mangione on two counts of stalking, a firearms offense and murder through the use of a firearm, as Faris Tanyos reported for CBS News. The following week, federal prosecutors said they would seek the death penalty, and Mangione pleaded not guilty to all federal charges in a Manhattan courthouse, CNN reported.
In late July, Mangioni’s lawyers asked why the government was seeking the death penalty, Laura Italiano reported for Business Insider. On Monday, July 28, federal prosecutors opposed the request and asked for a month to explain why, she added.
Keeping physician pay low
One source for Stanton’s article was Ron Howrigon, who answered a help-wanted ad for a job at Kaiser Permanente after graduating from college in 1987. Howrigon thought a career in health care would make him a force for good, Stanton wrote. Later, Howrigon worked for Cigna, negotiating the lowest possible payment rates for doctors and other providers, Stanton added.
To demonstrate Cigna’s strength in talks with doctors, Howrigon’s team was told to kick 150 physicians out of the network. From that experience, he learned that the pursuit of profit outweighed the need to help members get the care they needed, Stanton reported.
Next, Howrigon took a job at a nonprofit Blue Cross Blue Shield plan in Pennsylvania, hoping they would not prioritize boosting revenue as much as for-profit plans did. This time, Howrigon’s job was to cut payment rates to physicians; the target was obstetricians’ pay, Stanton wrote. Then, the day Howrigon’s wife had a successful caesarean section, his wife’s obstetrician told him, “Next time you take money out of a doctor’s pocket, remember today because I’m the one who was here,” Stanton reported. “That, Howrigon says, was his rock bottom.”
While on paternity leave, Howrigon planned to resign. He told Stanton that working for health insurers paid well, “But it was making me into a person I didn’t like.” Today, Howrigon is president and CEO of Fulcrum Strategies helping physicians negotiate higher payment rates from insurers.
Refusing to undermine the ACA
Another source for Stanton was Edmond S. Weisbart, M.D., an internal medicine physician who worked as the chief medical officer for Rush Prudential Health Plans in Chicago and then for Express Scripts, the pharmacy benefit manager in St. Louis. Today, he volunteers for Physicians for a National Health Program, a nonprofit in Chicago that advocates for universal single-payer national health insurance.
While at Express Scripts, health insurers sought to undermine the need for the Affordable Care Act, which Congress had been debating. An Express Scripts executive asked Weisbart to make a presentation showing how health care reform was unnecessary. Weisbart declined and later resigned.
In Stanton’s article, the fourth executive remained anonymous but provided similar anecdotes about how the profit motive trumped health insurers’ focus on paying for health plan members’ care.
For journalists, it’s important to note that when Potter left Cigna in 2008, health insurers were not as large, profitable nor as well connected as they are today.
“These companies are even bigger — far bigger — than they were when I was in the industry. They use a lot of their money on campaign contributions, on lobbying, on propaganda campaigns to protect the status quo,” Potter told Stanton.
Resources
- ‘Delay’ and ‘Deny’: The Outrage Over Prior Authorization, Chris Stanton, New York Magazine, Dec. 11, 2024.
- Dr. Oz Shilled for an Alternative to Medicare, Chris Stanton, New York Magazine, Nov. 25, 2024.
- Corporate Greed Made the Change Healthcare Cyberattack Worse, Chris Stanton, New York Magazine, March 7, 2024.
- The broken promises of ghost networks, Jocelyn Wiener, AHCJ, July 9, 2025.
- After setting enrollment records, ACA still needs improvement, Joseph Burns, AHCJ, April 9, 2025.
