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In 2010 WellPoint was found to be automatically targeting insurance policies of women with breast cancer for cancellation, using any pretext. Angela Braly was

by jcz_nz 1y ago

In 2010 WellPoint was found to be automatically targeting insurance policies of women with breast cancer for cancellation, using any pretext. Angela Braly was the CEO at the time, now at ExxonMobile. WellPoint was the second largest health insurer in the US at the time. This required a lot of business analysis and software development - and people had to realize what this code was doing. I’m guessing bonuses were paid on the back of the “savings” this generated.

jcz_nz 1y ago
At the very least, these folks need to have their names permanently attached to this atrocity. These weren’t decisions made by “a corporation” - these people sat across a meeting room table and actually concluded that targeting breast cancer patients was an acceptable means to an end. Lori A. Beer was the CIO at the time. Now at JP Morgan.
- testing22321 1y ago
  Na, just ban all of them and all their families from ever having health insurance again so they can suffer the same fate they doomed others too intentionally . Make an example and all that.
  - ghssds 1y ago
    It's counter-productive to punish someone for something out of their control. One should not be punished for his parents', siblings' or childs' actions.
    - jliptzin 1y ago
      It’s not even a punishment anyway, they can easily afford to pay for their care out of pocket.
      - ashdksnndck 1y ago
        Are you implying random programmers, administrators, and managers at insurance companies have generational wealth? Then why are they spending their time doing those jobs?
      - adrianN 1y ago
        It is my understanding that in the US many common health issues can cost you millions of dollars.
        thfuran 1y ago
        A few million dollars would probably cover months in the ICU, so not exactly common. A few tens of thousands would be a more plausible ambulance ride to ER followed by emergency surgery and a few days in the hospital, which still isn’t very common. Carrying a pregnancy to term and delivery can be similarly expensive though.
        adrianN 1y ago
        My twins spent a month in the ICU but my insurance covered it.
    - salawat 1y ago
      Ah, but the family of the canceled policyholders should suffer for losing their mother/sister/daughters? Make decisions to harm others, don't be surprised if it blows back in kind. Golden Rule is there for a reason. Treat others as you would have them do unto you.
      - gljiva 1y ago
        Have the families of those "insurers" made a decision to harm others?
        thephyber 1y ago
        A different lens to view this: If you benefit from receiving stolen property, does the law force you to return it? One way of interpreting your scare quotes is that the executives turned a health insurer into a law violating company. Obviously there are burdens of proof and this is most likely not possible to prosecute (it sounds like the health insurer has already shrunk and based on the date of the anecdote above, I’m guessing the relevant statutes of limitations have expired.
        jkaplowitz 1y ago
        > If you benefit from receiving stolen property, does the law force you to return it? The general answer to that is: it depends on a lot of factors, but sometimes yes and sometimes no. The specific answer varies between jurisdictions, I think even between different US states and certainly between countries. It's often relevant whether you knew or should reasonably have known at the time of purchase that the property was stolen.
        em-bee 1y ago
        well it depends, if you buy a car stolen from me, then i should get the car back, no matter what. if you didn't know that it was stolen, you have a claim against the person who sold you the car, but not me. but if that person can't return the money, then you are out of luck, just as when you are falling for a scam. not your fault, but your damage nontheless.
    - rswail 1y ago
      In the US it's unconstitutional for the government to do that, it's what the ban of laws of attainder is partially about.
      - thaumasiotes 1y ago
        > it's what the ban of laws of attainder is partially about. Not really; attainder occurs when you're convicted by a legislator as opposed to a judge.
        rswail 1y ago
        Well convicted without due process, which requires being tried by the judicial system, not the political one. But true, attainder is not directly related to kin punishment.
    - whoknowsidont 1y ago
      >It's counter-productive to punish someone for something out of their control. For people in specific classes that benefit from networks and status: it is not. It should be default. If you abuse your power and position, it should have cascading effects not just for you but people that benefited from it. This idea that only one person at fault when there are 10's of people that hide behind the crime is just non-sense and has done immeasurable damage to society. And I stress again: it should be income bracket/class based. The higher you are, the harder the fall.
      - teiferer 1y ago
        Collective punishment also has done immeasurable damage to society and I'm glad that most reasonable systems of law do not consider it legal. Go after the guilty party and revert whatever benefits they got. If money went to dependents, that money is to be seized. But those who received the money are not at fault per se. Unless they helped in the crime, then they are obviously guilty too, but not of receiving fund but for helping committing a crime.
        whoknowsidont 1y ago
        You just repeated what I said.
    - kstenerud 1y ago
      Yep. We have laws against that sort of thing precisely because it's such a common human reaction to an injustice. You can even see the evidence in many of the sister comments here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_punishment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_punishment
      - bestouff 1y ago
        Of course, but having their families profit from the money earnt via these evil actions doesn't seem fair either.
        kstenerud 1y ago
        We already have long-established legal precedent for dealing with such issues and much more. It can actually get quite complicated - which is why we defer to the experts and move slowly on such subjects.
        bluefirebrand 1y ago
        It really seems like it's only complicated because there are an awful lot of people who want to do as evil things as possible and not go to prison for it Loopholes and lawfare are the tools of the corrupt
        kstenerud 1y ago
        You'd think so, but no. Most of the complications come from handling edge cases where the innocent would get swept up, while avoiding exploitability. Making laws that actually do what we want is HARD. Laws are like code: It only seems perfect until it meets the real world. And the complications only seem frivolous until it's your ass on the line.
        whoknowsidont 1y ago
        >We already have long-established legal precedent for dealing with such issues and much more. We really don't in reality. The manner in which even the existing laws are enforced leaves a lot to be desired.
    - ajjahs 1y ago
      [dead]
    - bill_joy_fanboy 1y ago
      Is it really counter-productive, though? Propensity to do harm through crime, violence, etc. is largely a genetic attribute. Take a violent drug lord for example. Do you really want a woman capable of loving him allowed to continue on as if nothing happened?
- teiferer 1y ago
  "permanently" "ever again" For good reason, modern law systems rarely issue punishments that last a lifetime. People can and do change, and something stupid (and illegal) you did 30 years ago shouldn't be held over your head today. These are rare cases for the absolutely worst crimes. For anything else, you receive a punishment, be it money or months/years in jail, and after that, you deserve a chance to live a life without ongoing punishment. Beyond knowing what you did, and remembering the punishment, which for most people is already a burden heavy enough.
  - andrepd 1y ago
    It's a bit disingenuous to argue "they shouldn't get life without the possibility of parole" when in fact most of this economic white-collar crime goes completely unpunished, or at best gets a fine targeted at the company and never at the individual people who committed the crimes.
    - catgary 1y ago
      Most of these C-suite executives have more than enough money to retire comfortably.
      - andrepd 1y ago
        Yep! So they need to go to jail, or the "punishment" is moot. Obviously fining you 5$ for stealing 100 is not gonna work.
      - hnfong 1y ago
        This is more justification for banning people who got rich by doing illegal things from holding positions of power ever. Not to punish per se, but to prevent them from doing more harm to the public.
    - teiferer 1y ago
      To the contrary. I do find it a disingenuous argument to say "most of this kind of crime goes unpunished, so the cases we do punish, we have to punish for life". The solution is not harder punishments for those that are punished, but punishing more of them.
- nurettin 1y ago
  CIOs simply manage the IT budget and technology to be used. They don't necessarily have to be present for company policy planning.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  Same thing happened to patients with AIDS, in the 1990s. It was disgusting. May still be going on. People don't really care about drug addicts and gay folks, though (there's a fairly significant number of folks that think they "deserve" it), so it didn't get as much attention.
peterpeppers 1y ago
In the 2010s, we had a similar situation but it wasn’t illegal. I used to work for a large drug distributor both pre and during the opioid epidemic. At the time (pre-SUPPORT Act), distributors weren’t required to notify the DEA about anomalous ordering so we didn’t provide data to law enforcement unless they sent a subpoena. To increase profits, we identified our best customers of opioids and updated our inventory tracking system to send rebates and early warning notifications to providers so they’d buy more earlier. Each provider has a sales rep (territory) mapped so we could figure out bonuses easily. We the software engineering team were paid well for it, but not as much as the sales reps who got a percentage of the buy.
- gregoryl 1y ago
  It really seems like you have effectively caused the deaths of many people through your actions. Does that have a lingering impact on you?
  - globalise83 1y ago
    "We the software engineering team were paid well for it"
  - aydyn 1y ago
    Considering he just admitted it on public forum, Ima guess no.
    - gregoryl 1y ago
      I was hoping to get some insight/context into how they actually feel about it, rather than guessing. You can certainly come to peace with a past decision, change your opinion later etc etc.
  - immibis 1y ago
    I think it's still controversial whether manufacturers of substances are morally culpable for the result of people wrongly using them. And while you could hold the marketing or executive team accountable for trying to get people addicted to heroin, I'm not sure the same applies to programmers of an inventory tracking system?
globular-toast 1y ago
> This required a lot of business analysis and software development - and people had to realize what this code was doing Too many people are trained to not rock the boat and not ask questions. I'm always "that guy" in pretty much every meeting I'm in. Some people like me, but many don't. It's tough. On the occasions that all my questions are already answered or I have nothing more to say it's obvious how relieved people are. It would be so easy to just be a yes man and please people all the time, but I just can't. It's easy to see how selecting for people who aren't like me would lead to an organisation that is essentially psychopathic.
andrepd 1y ago
Whistleblower protections need to be steel-solid. Then maybe just 1 person with a spine might be enough to get the story to the press and/or prosecutors.
nodesocket 1y ago
Seems to be a trend of Women (especially the 30 under 30) in tech being especially fraudy.
- phatskat 1y ago
  Seems like a trend because you happen to focus on the gender being “interesting” - in reality we’ve always had fraud in tech and men have certainly led a ton of it. I guess my point is: why is gender at all relevant here?

by jcz_nz 1y ago

jcz_nz 1y ago

At the very least, these folks need to have their names permanently attached to this atrocity. These weren’t decisions made by “a corporation” - these people sat across a meeting room table and actually concluded that targeting breast cancer patients was an acceptable means to an end. Lori A. Beer was the CIO at the time. Now at JP Morgan.

testing22321 1y ago
Na, just ban all of them and all their families from ever having health insurance again so they can suffer the same fate they doomed others too intentionally . Make an example and all that.
- ghssds 1y ago
  It's counter-productive to punish someone for something out of their control. One should not be punished for his parents', siblings' or childs' actions.
  - jliptzin 1y ago
    It’s not even a punishment anyway, they can easily afford to pay for their care out of pocket.
    - ashdksnndck 1y ago
      Are you implying random programmers, administrators, and managers at insurance companies have generational wealth? Then why are they spending their time doing those jobs?
    - adrianN 1y ago
      It is my understanding that in the US many common health issues can cost you millions of dollars.
      - thfuran 1y ago
        A few million dollars would probably cover months in the ICU, so not exactly common. A few tens of thousands would be a more plausible ambulance ride to ER followed by emergency surgery and a few days in the hospital, which still isn’t very common. Carrying a pregnancy to term and delivery can be similarly expensive though.
        adrianN 1y ago
        My twins spent a month in the ICU but my insurance covered it.
  - salawat 1y ago
    Ah, but the family of the canceled policyholders should suffer for losing their mother/sister/daughters? Make decisions to harm others, don't be surprised if it blows back in kind. Golden Rule is there for a reason. Treat others as you would have them do unto you.
    - gljiva 1y ago
      Have the families of those "insurers" made a decision to harm others?
      - thephyber 1y ago
        A different lens to view this: If you benefit from receiving stolen property, does the law force you to return it? One way of interpreting your scare quotes is that the executives turned a health insurer into a law violating company. Obviously there are burdens of proof and this is most likely not possible to prosecute (it sounds like the health insurer has already shrunk and based on the date of the anecdote above, I’m guessing the relevant statutes of limitations have expired.
        jkaplowitz 1y ago
        > If you benefit from receiving stolen property, does the law force you to return it? The general answer to that is: it depends on a lot of factors, but sometimes yes and sometimes no. The specific answer varies between jurisdictions, I think even between different US states and certainly between countries. It's often relevant whether you knew or should reasonably have known at the time of purchase that the property was stolen.
        em-bee 1y ago
        well it depends, if you buy a car stolen from me, then i should get the car back, no matter what. if you didn't know that it was stolen, you have a claim against the person who sold you the car, but not me. but if that person can't return the money, then you are out of luck, just as when you are falling for a scam. not your fault, but your damage nontheless.
  - rswail 1y ago
    In the US it's unconstitutional for the government to do that, it's what the ban of laws of attainder is partially about.
    - thaumasiotes 1y ago
      > it's what the ban of laws of attainder is partially about. Not really; attainder occurs when you're convicted by a legislator as opposed to a judge.
      - rswail 1y ago
        Well convicted without due process, which requires being tried by the judicial system, not the political one. But true, attainder is not directly related to kin punishment.
  - whoknowsidont 1y ago
    >It's counter-productive to punish someone for something out of their control. For people in specific classes that benefit from networks and status: it is not. It should be default. If you abuse your power and position, it should have cascading effects not just for you but people that benefited from it. This idea that only one person at fault when there are 10's of people that hide behind the crime is just non-sense and has done immeasurable damage to society. And I stress again: it should be income bracket/class based. The higher you are, the harder the fall.
    - teiferer 1y ago
      Collective punishment also has done immeasurable damage to society and I'm glad that most reasonable systems of law do not consider it legal. Go after the guilty party and revert whatever benefits they got. If money went to dependents, that money is to be seized. But those who received the money are not at fault per se. Unless they helped in the crime, then they are obviously guilty too, but not of receiving fund but for helping committing a crime.
      - whoknowsidont 1y ago
        You just repeated what I said.
  - kstenerud 1y ago
    Yep. We have laws against that sort of thing precisely because it's such a common human reaction to an injustice. You can even see the evidence in many of the sister comments here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_punishment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_punishment
    - bestouff 1y ago
      Of course, but having their families profit from the money earnt via these evil actions doesn't seem fair either.
      - kstenerud 1y ago
        We already have long-established legal precedent for dealing with such issues and much more. It can actually get quite complicated - which is why we defer to the experts and move slowly on such subjects.
        bluefirebrand 1y ago
        It really seems like it's only complicated because there are an awful lot of people who want to do as evil things as possible and not go to prison for it Loopholes and lawfare are the tools of the corrupt
        kstenerud 1y ago
        You'd think so, but no. Most of the complications come from handling edge cases where the innocent would get swept up, while avoiding exploitability. Making laws that actually do what we want is HARD. Laws are like code: It only seems perfect until it meets the real world. And the complications only seem frivolous until it's your ass on the line.
        whoknowsidont 1y ago
        >We already have long-established legal precedent for dealing with such issues and much more. We really don't in reality. The manner in which even the existing laws are enforced leaves a lot to be desired.
  - ajjahs 1y ago
    [dead]
  - bill_joy_fanboy 1y ago
    Is it really counter-productive, though? Propensity to do harm through crime, violence, etc. is largely a genetic attribute. Take a violent drug lord for example. Do you really want a woman capable of loving him allowed to continue on as if nothing happened?
teiferer 1y ago
"permanently" "ever again" For good reason, modern law systems rarely issue punishments that last a lifetime. People can and do change, and something stupid (and illegal) you did 30 years ago shouldn't be held over your head today. These are rare cases for the absolutely worst crimes. For anything else, you receive a punishment, be it money or months/years in jail, and after that, you deserve a chance to live a life without ongoing punishment. Beyond knowing what you did, and remembering the punishment, which for most people is already a burden heavy enough.
- andrepd 1y ago
  It's a bit disingenuous to argue "they shouldn't get life without the possibility of parole" when in fact most of this economic white-collar crime goes completely unpunished, or at best gets a fine targeted at the company and never at the individual people who committed the crimes.
  - catgary 1y ago
    Most of these C-suite executives have more than enough money to retire comfortably.
    - andrepd 1y ago
      Yep! So they need to go to jail, or the "punishment" is moot. Obviously fining you 5$ for stealing 100 is not gonna work.
    - hnfong 1y ago
      This is more justification for banning people who got rich by doing illegal things from holding positions of power ever. Not to punish per se, but to prevent them from doing more harm to the public.
  - teiferer 1y ago
    To the contrary. I do find it a disingenuous argument to say "most of this kind of crime goes unpunished, so the cases we do punish, we have to punish for life". The solution is not harder punishments for those that are punished, but punishing more of them.
nurettin 1y ago
CIOs simply manage the IT budget and technology to be used. They don't necessarily have to be present for company policy planning.
ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
Same thing happened to patients with AIDS, in the 1990s. It was disgusting. May still be going on. People don't really care about drug addicts and gay folks, though (there's a fairly significant number of folks that think they "deserve" it), so it didn't get as much attention.

peterpeppers 1y ago

In the 2010s, we had a similar situation but it wasn’t illegal. I used to work for a large drug distributor both pre and during the opioid epidemic. At the time (pre-SUPPORT Act), distributors weren’t required to notify the DEA about anomalous ordering so we didn’t provide data to law enforcement unless they sent a subpoena. To increase profits, we identified our best customers of opioids and updated our inventory tracking system to send rebates and early warning notifications to providers so they’d buy more earlier. Each provider has a sales rep (territory) mapped so we could figure out bonuses easily. We the software engineering team were paid well for it, but not as much as the sales reps who got a percentage of the buy.

gregoryl 1y ago
It really seems like you have effectively caused the deaths of many people through your actions. Does that have a lingering impact on you?
- globalise83 1y ago
  "We the software engineering team were paid well for it"
- aydyn 1y ago
  Considering he just admitted it on public forum, Ima guess no.
  - gregoryl 1y ago
    I was hoping to get some insight/context into how they actually feel about it, rather than guessing. You can certainly come to peace with a past decision, change your opinion later etc etc.
- immibis 1y ago
  I think it's still controversial whether manufacturers of substances are morally culpable for the result of people wrongly using them. And while you could hold the marketing or executive team accountable for trying to get people addicted to heroin, I'm not sure the same applies to programmers of an inventory tracking system?

globular-toast 1y ago

> This required a lot of business analysis and software development - and people had to realize what this code was doing Too many people are trained to not rock the boat and not ask questions. I'm always "that guy" in pretty much every meeting I'm in. Some people like me, but many don't. It's tough. On the occasions that all my questions are already answered or I have nothing more to say it's obvious how relieved people are. It would be so easy to just be a yes man and please people all the time, but I just can't. It's easy to see how selecting for people who aren't like me would lead to an organisation that is essentially psychopathic.

andrepd 1y ago

Whistleblower protections need to be steel-solid. Then maybe just 1 person with a spine might be enough to get the story to the press and/or prosecutors.

nodesocket 1y ago

Seems to be a trend of Women (especially the 30 under 30) in tech being especially fraudy.

phatskat 1y ago
Seems like a trend because you happen to focus on the gender being “interesting” - in reality we’ve always had fraud in tech and men have certainly led a ton of it. I guess my point is: why is gender at all relevant here?