Our very own Murray Waas broke the story:

In May, 2002, Jerome Mitchell, a 17-year old college freshman from rural South Carolina, learned he had contracted HIV. The news, of course, was devastating, but Mitchell believed that he had one thing going for him: On his own initiative, in anticipation of his first year in college, he had purchased his own health insurance.

Shortly after his diagnosis, however, his insurance company, Fortis, revoked his policy. Mitchell was told that without further treatment his HIV would become full-blown AIDS within a year or two and he would most likely die within two years after that.

So he hired an attorney -- not because he wanted to sue anyone; on the contrary, the shy African-American teenager expected his insurance was canceled by mistake and would be reinstated once he set the company straight.

But Fortis, now known as Assurant Health, ignored his attorney's letters, as they had earlier inquiries from a case worker at a local clinic who was helping him. So Mitchell sued.

In 2004, a jury in Florence County, South Carolina, ordered Assurant Health, part of Assurant Inc, to pay Mitchell $15 million for wrongly revoking his heath insurance policy. In September 2009, the South Carolina Supreme Court upheld the lower court's verdict, although the court reduced the amount to be paid him to $10 million.

By winning the verdict against Fortis, Mitchell not only obtained a measure of justice for himself; he also helped expose wrongdoing on the part of Fortis that could have repercussions for the entire health insurance industry.

It turned out that Fortis/Assurant had a policy of targeting every customer with an HIV diagnosis for a fraud investigation where the company would search for any pretext to drop the policy.

Rescission--or the practice of dropping insurance policies at the time when customers need them, namely, when they become ill--is widespread and insurance companies are unapologetic for doing so.

An investigation by the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations showed that health insurers WellPoint Inc., UnitedHealth Group and Assurant Inc. canceled the coverage of more than 20,000 people, allowing the companies to avoid paying more than $300 million in medical claims over a five-year period.

It also found that policyholders with breast cancer, lymphoma and more than 1,000 other conditions were targeted for rescission and that employees were praised in performance reviews for terminating the policies of customers with expensive illnesses.

Nevertheless, the judges involved in this case called Assurant/Fortis' actions in targeting specifically HIV patients "reprehensible." It is also a policy that will end with the health care reform bill.

Murray Waas has a fascinating piece in the new Atlantic about Dan Bogden, the onetime U.S. Attorney from Nevada who got shoved out by the Rove Crew:

A Justice Department official told me that the idea of hiring Bogden back is in fact a real possibility, and said that the White House counsel’s office has been quietly vetting his background in anticipation of his possible reappointment—not a difficult task, considering that he has been employed by the government for the majority of his adult life.

If Bogden is reappointed as U.S. attorney, his supervisor will be one of the authors of the Justice Department’s report on the U.S. attorney firings that praised Bogden and severely criticized the Bush administration appointees who fired him. Last Thursday, Attorney General Eric Holder reassigned H. Marshall Jarrett, the head of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility, to head the executive office of U.S. attorneys, where he will oversee the nation’s 94 U.S. attorneys. By naming Jarrett to his new position, a senior Obama administration official told me, “I think this administration is sending a message that the era of politicization of the Department should be long due over.” The same official told me: “The continued service of Dan Bogden might hopefully send the same message.”

Slowly but surely, the men whose careers were ruined by Rove and the Gang are being restored, at least incrementally. David Iglesias, the fired New Mexico U.S. Attorney, has been working on Guantanamo cases for the Navy's JAG unit.

John McKay, the fired U.S. attorney from Washington state, is now working for Getty Images.

I wonder if Karl Rove will have any comment about this anytime in the near future on Fox News. I suspect he's too busy bashing Obama, however.

With the news of his friend Brian Beutler’s shooting, and after spending some time with the family of an Iraqi war veteran from Massachusetts who came safely home only to be killed in a Texas bar, Murray Waas contemplates RFK’s words on violence.

Murray Waas explains:

Freedom of expression may be guaranteed by the Constitution. But it’s an idea we have to fight for every day.

The great civil libertarian Nat Hentoff once said that our sex drive pales in comparison with our urge to censor. It’s an urge that is played out in places high and low, encompassing both the serious and the absurd. Military veterans protesting the war are arrested in Boston and charged with disturbing the peace. An anti-abortion activist in Maine borrows sex-education books from public libraries and refuses to return them. A legislative leader in Rhode Island– the head of John McCain’s presidential campaign in that state– compares anonymous critics to `terrorists,’ and helps kill a proposal aimed at guaranteeing their First Amendment rights...

And let us not forget Robert Watson:

Robert Watson is both the minority leader of the Rhode Island House, and the chief chair of John McCain’s presidential campaign in Rhode Island. He is also, according to this week’s Boston Phoenix (see post below), one of those deserving by the alt weekly of one of their annual award winners for muzzling free speech in New England...read on

Our man Flint---Mr. Murray Waas---the super sleuth investigative reporter from the National Journal---who did the best work on the Plame case bar none---is being hounded---not by Karl Rove or the Weekly Standard or even the White House, but an alt weekly in Washington D.C.

The culprit of this vicious attack is a mini-rag called the Washington City Paper in DC. Most recently, they became best known for the theatre critic who wrote a review of a play but never stayed past intermission to watch the entire show. I ain't kidding.

The attempted swift boating has nothing to do with journalism or politics, but rather because the editor of the paper uses his newspaper to settle personal scores and his own vendettas. Super silly and super slimy.

Wonkette has the latest garbage from this hack of a rag. The editor of the paper even went so far as to launch an investigation of the local bloggers after they reported about his years-long feud with their next door neighbor, the Wag Time Pet Spa. The editor’s wife was arrested for assaulting their neighbor—slinging something at the owner of the doggy spa. No, really.

Continue reading »

Tapped:

"Before this point gets lost in the din of the latest leak disclosures, it needs to be said, as loudly as possible, that the big story has yet to be told, and in that regard, Murray Waas's previous scoop about Karl Rove is even more important -- and more deserving of mainstream media attention -- in light of the new revelations. In that piece, Waas reported that a classified one-page summary of the now-notorious National Intelligence Estimate was given to Bush, which says that some intelligence officials had serious doubts about the claim that Saddam wanted aluminum tubes for nukes -- and that Bush was given this summary before repeating the tubes claim in his speech...read on"

The New Bob Woodward

Jay Rosen says that Murray Waas is the new Bob Woodward. I've been posting Murray's articles for a long time and he's uncovered facts about this administration that so many have missed. He's been Mr. Indispensable. Joe Gandleman shares the same view.

Murray Waas nails Pat Roberts. When are the investigations coming for him? Don't hold your breath.

"On March 20, 2003, at the onset of military hostilities between U.S. and Iraqi forces, Roberts said in a speech to the National Newspaper Association that he had "been in touch with our intelligence community" and that the CIA had informed President Bush and the National Security Council "of intelligence information from what we call human intelligence that indicated the location of Saddam Hussein and his leadership in a bunker in the suburbs of Baghdad."

The former intelligence officials said in interviews that Roberts was never held accountable for his comments, which bore directly on the issue of intelligence-gathering sources and methods, and revealed that Iraqis close to Hussein were probably talking to the United States.

These former officials contrasted the Roberts case with last week's firing of CIA officer Mary O. McCarthy, as examples of how rank and file intelligence professionals now have much to fear from legitimate and even inadvertent contacts with journalists, while senior executive branch officials and members of Congress are almost never held accountable when they seriously breach national security through leaks of information....read on

The Washington Post covers the Murtha smears, but Murray Waas uncovers a few more facts about David Thibault, editor in chief of the Cybercast News Service that the WaPo does not.

Murray:

"But the article tells us very little about Thibault himself. Had the reporters done a simple Internet search, they would have discovered this biography of Thibault posted online which describes him as a "senior producer for a televised news magazine" broadcast and sponsored by the Republican National Committee. I dunno, but I for one, would have wanted to know that...read on "

It would have been nice to know that the swiftboating of Murtha is coming from someone with deep ties to the RNC. He's also linked to Bobby Eberle of GOPUSA, the former boss of Jeff Gannon.

(Update): from Waas:

"What the Post leaves out of its story is that Saylor is deceased, and well, has been for some time now. (Saylor died way back in 1973, something that the Cybercast "News" Service, noted in their news story-- not to impugn their reporting practices.) In short, the Washington Post is relying on something said by a person with an axe to grind (Fox), who is quoting someone who is deceased (but who the newspaper forgot to tell you is deceased.) But it is even somewhat worse than that: the Post is quoting the ever-so-reliable and unbiased Cybercast News Service, which is quoting a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article, which includes an allegation by Fox... who is citing someone now deceased.

Waas: Democrats May Press for Select Committee to Investigate Pre-War Intelligence

Murray Waas has a new exclusive article reporting that Democratic Senators are considering pressing for a Senate Select Committee -- along the lines of the Senate Watergate and Church Committees -- to investigate the Administration's pre-war intelligence claims as well as the Valerie Plame affair....read on

Jeralyn at Talk Left gives a detailed analysis of Murray's column.