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We wouldn't want any evil government involvement to interfere with these guys' ability to cancel breast cancer victims' insurance policies, would we?
WellPoint routinely targets breast cancer patients - Yahoo! News (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100423/hl_nm/us_wellpoint_cancer - broken link)
Quote:
Shortly after they were diagnosed with breast cancer, each of the women learned that her health insurance had been canceled. There was Yenny Hsu, who lived and worked in Los Angeles. And there was Patricia Reilling, a successful art gallery owner and interior designer from Louisville, Kentucky.
Neither of these women knew about the other. But besides their similar narratives, they had something else in common: Their health insurance carriers were subsidiaries of WellPoint, which has 33.7 million policyholders -- more than any other health insurance company in the United States.
The women paid their premiums on time. Before they fell ill, neither had any problems with their insurance. Initially, they believed their policies had been canceled by mistake.
They had no idea that WellPoint was using a computer algorithm that automatically targeted them and every other policyholder recently diagnosed with breast cancer. The software triggered an immediate fraud investigation, as the company searched for some pretext to drop their policies, according to government regulators and investigators.
Once the women were singled out, they say, the insurer then canceled their policies based on either erroneous or flimsy information. WellPoint declined to comment on the women's specific cases without a signed waiver from them, citing privacy laws.
Agreed. We certainly need to allow companies to do what's best for them, and not honor their commitments if it's going to cost them money. Now maybe if they could've bought some policy across state lines. . . oh, forget it!
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