CosmicSandBox’s Weblog

“When the power of love overcomes the love of power we will have peace.” Jimmy Hendricks

There is hope for peace… if we learn how to listen to and really see each other. The human drive for power will rule the roost until a way is opened up within the heart to see and feel how that power affects the powerless. This point was driven home to me as I watched Bill Moyers Journal program on PBS this past weekend. A reformed and contrite CIGNA Insurance Co. executive, Wendell Potter, related how he had supported the insurance giant’s refusal to cover life threatening surgeries and treatments to increase their stockholder value.

Mr. Potter went into great detail explaining how the insurance companies use deceptive propaganda about regulated insurance calling it socialism. They lie to discredit anyone who exposes their draconian policies in an attempt to rein them in.

(You may view the entire interview on this link: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/blog/. (You will be shocked and dismayed to hear the truth of what is really going on “under the hood” so to speak.)

What could possibly have caused Mr. Potter to do an about face and expose the almost criminal policies of his employer of many years? It turns out, he felt guided to attend a health care exposition in his home state of West Virginia while visiting family there. He assumed it would be a typical health fair with booths and free samples of health care goodies and free blood pressure testing.

However, what he saw was incredible to him. Doctors and nurses had set up tents to provide totally free care. Some even set up in the animal stalls. He saw people being treated on gurneys on the rain- soaked pavement. There were hundreds of people waiting in long lines. Some had driven long hours from surrounding states.

It dawned on him that some of these people could be folks he’d grown up with. He felt like he had been hit by a lightening bolt. He couldn’t believe he was in America! He had been so insulated in his ivory tower high rise in Philadelphia, flying on corporate jets with gold plated silverware. He realized that these poor uninsured citizens had no idea of the opulence afforded to corporate executives of health insurance companies.

In all the years he worked for CIGNA he had never come face to face with the reality of how the purging from the rolls, the raising of premiums and denying of claims had affected the average American. He said, “When you’re reporting to the financial analyst of the company all you think about are the numbers. You don’t think about individual people. You think only about meeting Wall Street’s expectations. It enables one to stay there if you don’t really think that you’re talking about and dealing with real human beings.”

After the health fair incident as he was struggling with how to reconcile his work with CIGNA and what he knew now as reality, a quote from Profiles in Courage by President John Kennedy haunted him. “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of moral crisis, maintain neutrality.” He knew this applied to him. He was transformed and resigned from CIGNA. Now he is telling the inside story of the mercenary tactics of the corporate giants that don’t want to lose power, and are willing to do anything to keep it.

Potter is just one man that has ‘seen the Light’ and responded with love for his fellow man. He gave up the lust for power for the love of people. He was only able to do this because he was led to SEE the reality from within his own heart. He was not badgered and criticized by activists. He was gifted the grace and space to open and take in the suffering of real people and see how his actions affected them on the ground. (Please do check out the program on PBS.)

Mr. Potter’s conversion inspired me to ponder, ‘how many more blind executives might be able to descend their ivory towers and empathize with the average American suffering under corporate greed and lust for power?’ Instead of just assuming they are all evil monsters, maybe we can encourage more of them to experience reality as Mr. Potter did. It can open the fortress a crack and let the Light shine in so the power of Love can do its perfect work.