Michael Burnham

My interests: Health reform and the Affordable Care Act

No corporation can claim a more vital role in passing and starting to implement the health care reform law than WellPoint. This is not to say that WellPoint supported health reform; quite the opposite. But as President Obama's May 8 radio address demonstrated that WellPoint is a uniquely maladroit corporate heavy. If it didn't exist, Obama might have 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, and news of the practice was broken by Reuters in an April 22 news story by Murray Waas, an investigative reporter who also happens to be a cancer survivor. Murray Waas reported WellPoint

was using a computer algorithm that automatically targeted … every … policyholder recently diagnosed with breast cancer. The software triggered an immediate fraud investigation, as the company searched for some pretext to drop their policies.