Imagine being diagnosed with cancer.  Then imagine that, shortly after your diagnosis, your insurance company cancels your coverage because you neglected to report a visit to your dermatologist for acne on your application.  According to a June 17, 2009 article in the Los Angeles Times, this is exactly what happened to a woman from Texas. 

This is not an isolated incident: it’s a widespread practice insurance companies call rescission. A recent congressional investigation found 20,000 similar cases of cancelled coverage by three major insurers over 5 years. The investigation also found glowing performance reviews for insurance company employees who used technicalities to cancel the coverage of people with major illnesses, thereby contributing millions in savings to the corporate bottom line.

In congressional hearings, health insurance CEOs defended rescission as necessary to protect their companies against fraud by patients who lie on their applications.  The moral logic at work here is interesting.  Assuming all these cases of rescission are due to intentional fraud by applicants, the CEOs' interpretation of what justice means dictates that these patients should be punished with bankruptcy on top of their terminal illnesses.

This argument might make sense for canceling someone’s mobile phone contract, or an auto loan.  But is it really moral and just when it comes to canceling the medical coverage of someone facing a deadly disease? 

In the current health care debate, the medical industry’s basic argument is that the freedom of corporations to pursue profits is inviolable, but humans’ need to live free from preventable illness and medical bankruptcy is an optional privilege. The rights and interests of corporations are being placed above the rights and interests of people in our families and communities, our fellow citizens.

The practice of rescission brings up the question of whether it is a good idea for corporations to be in the business of providing healthcare at all.  Corporations do a very good job of making consumer products and generating wealth, but they haven’t done a good job at providing health care: almost 50 million Americans are uninsured, paying for healthcare causes hundreds of thousands of American families to go bankrupt -- even if they have insurance -- and the US has the highest medical costs in the world. 

This shouldn’t be surprising. Corporations’ primary function is to deliver profits for their stockholders, to whom they are ultimately accountable.  Government, on the other hand, is ultimately accountable to voters. So it might make sense to get our government involved in the task of making healthcare available to all citizens, as it does in every other developed country in the world.    

Americans are catching on: recent nationwide surveys show that over 70% of respondents agree that there should be a public option, run by the government, competing in the marketplace as an alternative to corporate health insurance. Yet, despite the popularity of this proposal, even Democrats in Congress say they “don’t have the votes” to include a public option in upcoming healthcare legislation.  It makes you wonder whose interests members of Congress are truly representing, those of their constituents or those of medical industry corporations.

The public option is already a compromise from the “single payer” plan, where the government would be the single payer, and would guarantee coverage for every American.  But the medical industry will fight any change from the status quo no matter how small, and it has the massive financial resources necessary to influence legislators and the public. Which leaves the Democrats performing a familiar act: getting endlessly bogged down in wonkish details, and seeking further compromise for the sake of bipartisanship.

At the end of the day, will we still have no choice besides corporate health insurance companies that cancel the coverage of terminally ill people? As citizens, we need to help our elected officials focus on making sure the final outcome of healthcare reform legislation really reflects our sense of what is right -- not the health insurance CEOs’ -- and truly represents the best interests of all Americans.