During the health care reform debates, insurance companies did their best to convince everyone that they were the best thing to ever happen to sick folks in America. As always, some people swallowed the B.S. whole. Most of us, though, only had to recall a friend or family member’s latest health insurance horror story and, presto, back to the real world, where insurers don’t give a rosy rat’s ass about their customers – particularly if those customers’ pesky illnesses threaten the company’s profits.

In case you’re still seething over Obama’s “Stalinist takeover” of health care, try reading an eye-opening new report from Reuters. The news organization reports that insurance giant Wellpoint (i.e., Blue Cross Blue Shield) has been “targeting” its customers with breast cancer, expressly to deny them needed care. Wellpoint set up a computer program that would launch a fraud investigation whenever one of its customers was diagnosed with breast cancer. The company would then start looking for any excuse to cancel the customer’s policy and deny them coverage retroactively, in a process called "rescission." The new health care law is supposed to end such practices, but it will take careful enforcement to make it stick – that, and perhaps a few insurance execs sitting behind bars.

•         Proud to deny breast cancer coverage to fellow women