Yenny Hsu of Los Angeles, Robin Beaton of Texas and Patricia Relling of Louisville, Kentucky are not alone. But they probably feel that way.

The three women, whose names surfaced today in a stunning, 4,200-word expose by Reuters, each have breast cancer. And each had insurance carriers that are subsidiaries of WellPoint, which has 33.7 million policy holders – about one of every nine Americans covered by private insurance.

As Reuters reported, “The women all paid their premiums on time. Before they fell ill, none had any problems with their insurance. Initially, they believed their policies had been cancelled 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.”

Let’s see here. Some “pretext” to drop their policies? Could the pretext be the dreaded “c” word? Could it be because they are women?

Yes – and maybe. You see, it turns out that women are more likely to get breast cancer and to get pregnant than men are.

“It’s not like these companies don’t like women because they are women,” Jeff Isaacs, the chief assistant Los Angeles City Attorney who runs the office’s 300-lawyer criminal division, told Reuters. “But there are two things that really scare them and they are breast cancer and pregnancy. Breast cancer can really be a costly thing for them. Pregnancy is right up there too. The worst-case scenario is that a child will be born with some disability and they will have to pay for that child’s treatment over the course of a lifetime.”

Tens of thousands of Americans have lost their life insurance because of life-threatening medical conditions, a practice known as “recission.” The new health care reform law is aimed at stopping outlawing this practice, among other things, but we will need strong federal regulations – currently in formation – to make sure it is reform done right.

Strangely enough, President Obama used Robin Beaton’s example in the key health care speech he made to Congress last September in which he successfully pushed back against the tea baggers and got health care reform back on track. But White House aides told Reuters that no one in the White House knew that WellPoint was singling out breast cancer patients like Beaton.

According to Reuters, in June 2008, Beaton learned that her insurance had been dropped just as she was about to undergo surgery for breast cancer. She had been recently diagnosed as having a particularly aggressive type of cancer that would require a double mastectomy.

Beaton’s problem? Apparently she visited her dermatologist before being diagnosed with breast cancer. A word written on her chart was mistakenly determined to be precancerous. In fact, she was being treated for acne.

Beaton’s surgery was postponed for five months while she frantically sought to get her coverage reinstated. WellPoint finally agreed to cover the surgery. In the meantime, the cancerous mass in her breast had grown from 2 centimeters to 7 centimeters. Now her survival rate is a fraction of what it would have been if she had her surgery earlier.

Words are neither numerous nor powerful enough to capture the rage many Americans feel about the way we have been treated by the big insurance companies like WellPoint.

So I’ll simply close by quoting Ethan Rome, executive director of Health Care for America Now:

“WellPoint is committing murder by spreadsheet, and it has to stop now. This is a matter of life and death, and the executives and board members of WellPoint need to be held to account to the fullest extent of the law.

“WellPoint’s Blue Cross-Blue Shield companies’ disregard for human life to maximize profits is immoral and outrageous. The Reuters report shows an unconscionable pattern of denying needed health care to line the pockets of wealthy executives and shareholders.

“Today’s disclosure provides more evidence of why Congress needed to pass national health reform in the first place, and it also shows why we need to curb the extraordinary influence of insurance companies so they don’t interfere with enforcement of the new law. We need the forthcoming federal regulations to shine a light on the insurance companies and hold them accountable for their bad practices.”

David Elliot is the Communications Director at USAction

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