Michael Morse

I work on isssues related to racial, income and gender inequities in the American health care system: The chances of living a long and healthy life differ dramatically for the rich and poor. How might such inequality be reduced? The long-standing debates on health care reform in the United States address such possibilities as providing universal access to health insurance.

Among my thoughts:

The usual suspects have been attacking Obama for “demonizing” insurance companies; but saying that people do terrible things isn’t demonization if they do, in fact, do terrible things.

And health insurers do, because they have huge financial incentives to act in an inhumane way — most obviously, by revoking coverage when people get sick, using whatever rationale they can devise.

Read this report by Murray Waas on Assurant Health (previously called Fortis), which used a computer algorithm to identify every client with HIV, then systematically revoked coverage on the flimsiest of grounds. No corporation can claim a more vital role in passing and starting to implement the health care reform law than WellPoint., which also canceled customers--- in this instance, those with breast cancer.