Jon Rhodes

I am a doctorate candidate in political science at American University currently, studying the intersection of politics and policy, focusing on health care, tax law, and other domestic issues.

Reuters has an eye-opening investigation today showing how the health-insurance company Assurant Health (formerly called Fortis) systematically targeted sick patients for “rescission”—where insurers pick expensive customers and find technicalities to dump them.

A computer program and an algorithm targeted every policyholder recently diagnosed with HIV for an automatic fraud investigation, as the company searched for any pretext to revoke their policy, according to a Reuters-Murray Waas story. As was the case with Mitchell, their insurance policies were canceled on erroneous information, the flimsiest of evidence, or for no good reason at all, according to the court documents. The great journalist Murray Waas is on the case here, getting hold of “previously undisclosed records” from a case that went to the South Carolina Supreme Court involving a 17-year-old who sued Assurant for dropping him.