...is that it was the "gold-plated flatware" that ultimately drove Wendell Potter out of his ivory tower. Here he recounts the tale of visiting a disaster relief site in rural Virginia:
I had no idea what to expect, but when I walked through the fairground gates, it was just absolutely overwhelming … [P]eople … were lined up in the rain by the hundreds … and they were being treated in animal stalls … They also had set up tents. It looked like a MASH unit. It looked like this could have been something that was happening in a war-torn country, and war refugees were there to get their care [...]If Diogenes had found Potter he could have put down his lamp.
It was just unbelievable, and it just drove it home to me, maybe for the first time, that we were talking about real human beings and not just numbers [...]
[T]wo or three weeks later, I was [flying to a meeting] on one of the corporate jets … I was served my lunch on a gold-rimmed plate, was given gold-plated flatware [...]
it just dawned on me, for the first time, that someone’s premiums … were paying for my lunch on gold-trimmed china [...]
I thought about those men and women that I had seen in Wise County … not having any idea that this is the way that insurance executives lived and how premium dollars were being spent … I had to leave [...]
No comments:
Post a Comment