Should it be viewed as a positive sign for health insurance reform that CNBC, well known for its pro-business bias, is interviewing a former health insurance executive who is in favor of government run health care?

Could that be the final coffin nail for the insurance industry’s current business model of cherry picking the healthiest customers and stealthily continuing to be the (corporate) bureaucrat behind the scenes?

Maybe, maybe not, but at least he wasn’t booed by the traders on the NYSE trading floor (located behind the CNBC desk).

I’ve mentioned Wendall Potter several times in the past, but checkout his CNBC interview this morning that went over very well thanks to some well thought out questions by the hosts.

It’s notable that Mark Haines, like he always does, distills the entire debate down to one key bullet point: who gets to be the middleman? Is it better to have a government bureaucrat working a 9 to 5 salary job, or a corporate bureaucrat with a stock option plan and Wall Street analysts to please. The answer seems fairly obvious to me, but it’s not my golden goose that’s about to be taken away.

Of course, being the middleman has always been a fairly lucrative business… until you’ve been phased out by cost cutting. That said, you can probably understand why the insurance companies are putting up such a fight.

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