Darrow Jones

Darrow Jones is an attorney and health care activist-- and is working towards obtaining universal health care for all Americans.

No corporation can claim a more vital role in passint the health care reform law than WellPoint. That is not to say that WellPoint supported health reform; quite the opposite. But as President Obama's radio address, WellPoint is a uniquely maladroit corporate heavy. If it didn't exist, Obama would have had had to invent it.

"[W]hen we found out that an insurance company was systematically dropping the coverage of women diagnosed with breast cancer," Obama said in the address, "my administration called on them to end this practice immediately." The company went unnamed, but it was WellPoint; the news was broken by Reuters in a news story by Murray Waas, an investigative reporter who also happens to be a cancer survivor. Murray Waas reported that WellPoint

was using a computer algorithm that automatically targeted … every … policyholder recently diagnosed with breast cancer as the company searched for some pretext to drop their policies.