A 21st-century Christmas Carol: How one Scrooge became a health-care whistleblower

Former health-care executive Wendell Potter spent part of 2020 publishing high-profile apologies for the work he used to do, the lies he says he told the American people for his old employers,and trying to debunk the myths he once sold. The story of how he became a whistle-blower is a modern-day Christmas Carol,complete with ghosts of past, present, and future. It’s also a story about the long, messy process of change, whether that’s changing your own life or trying to change a bigger system.

It’s a great way to close out a pretty-terrible year.

Another cheerful note:  THANK YOU!!! Your support for this show has MET OUR GOAL for the donation-matching program NewsMatch. It’s a huge, huge boost for our work in 2021.

Of course, we could still use your support before the year ends.  We would love it. There is SO much work ahead.

AND, if you’re looking for other places to help out, here are a few places doing powerful work:

• Remote Area Medical runs free pop-up clinics, and seeing one played a role in Wendell Potter’s move from Scrooge to whistle-blower.
• Get Us PPE helps front-line workers get the personal protective equipment they need to stay safe during the pandemic. (And yep, that is still a thing. Grrr…)
• RIP Medical Debt pools money to buy up old medical debt and forgive it. By doing bulk transactions, they can take a $5 donation and use it to discharge $500 in debt. (We featured their work in a 2019 episode, Christmas in July.)
• MLK 50: Justice Through Journalism does powerful investigative reporting. After they exposed how the biggest hospital in Memphis was suing patients over unpaid bills, the hospital was shamed into dropping thousands of lawsuits and erasing almost $12 million in debt.

And of course it is absolutely not too late to support this show. Here’s that link: https://armandalegshow.com/support/

Also, here’s a transcript for this episode.

Send your stories and questions: https://armandalegshow.com/contact/ or call 724 ARM-N-LEG