mike farner

No corporation can claim a more vital role in passing and starting to implement the health care reform law than WellPoint, which has a larger customer base (34 million) than any other health insurer. This is not to say that WellPoint supported health reform; quite the opposite. But as President Obama's demonstrated, WellPoint is a uniquely maladroit corporate heavy. If it didn't exist, Obama might have had to invent it.

"[W]e found out that an insurance company was systematically dropping the coverage of women diagnosed with breast cancer," Obama said, "my administration told them to stop." The company went unnamed, but it was WellPoint, and news of the practice was broken by Reuters in a news story by Murray Waas. Waas reported that WellPoint

was using an algorithm that automatically targeted … every … policyholder recently diagnosed with breast cancer. The software triggered an investigation, as the company searched for some pretext to drop policies, according to government regulators and investigators.