Finally a health insurance company competently defends themselves from egregious claims against it. HHS (Health and Human Services) Secretary Sebelius and Reuters accuse WellPoint of specifically targeting women with breast cancer to drop their policies. For the counterclaim by WellPoint, please see link.

WellPoint goes on to say that when people fraudulently fill out applications it’s their duty to review those applications. They have a very thorough and professional process, and exercise a high level of due diligence on those review cases. And in fact the charge of dropping policies is not even what the case is about; it’s about rescinding policies where there is fraud involved.  What Sebelius does not understand is that for a health insurer to detect fraud is protecting the policy holders of the company. If someone has a $50,000 claim for an illness, in the end it would not be the insurance company that would pay for that claim. Ultimately it is the other policy holders who pay.

It’s only fitting that Angela Braly, the CEO of WellPoint, makes a very strong response to Sebelius. It was in fact Braly that allowed the California subsidiary to put through rate increases of up to 39% that gave the congress and Obama administration the renewed fuel to pass health reform that was believed to be all but dead in February. Better late than never?