Nicholas Bauer

Nicholas Bauer is a public relations consultant who has worked for major corporations on strategic messaging and managing damage control.

On Thursday, Reuters ran a story describing a policy at insurance company WellPoint of automatically reviewing any customer who contracted breast cancer for possible fraud, leading to some patients losing their coverage. WellPoint is contesting the story, with a lengthy, rather legalistic statement on its website. "The story . . . misstates the role of what it terms computer algorithms."

The White House meanwhile is piling on. On Thursday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius sent a letter to WellPoint’s CEO asking that the company stop the practice of reviewing the claims of sick women. As WellPoint and Reuters seem to make clear, the sick women’s were reviewed for evidence of fraud.

UPDATE: WellPoint has responded to the Sebelius letter with a sharply worded letter of its own,“To be absolutely clear, WellPoint does not single out women with breast cancer for rescission. Period.”