Medlock

Mathew asked NPR not to use his full name because he fears repercussions from his health insurance company if it finds out he got married to obtain coverage.
Marrying for health insurance? The ACA cost crisis forces some drastic choices

Like, what, exactly? There's no indication in the story that Mathew didn't actually marry Christina, his long-time roommate, so it's not as if he could be charged with fraud. And marriages of convenience aren't a new thing. When an unemployed ex-girlfriend of mine was having mental health issues, co-workers had no compunctions about suggesting a walk down the aisle, with the express purpose of obtaining coverage for her on my insurance plan.

This is another problem that corporations have, reputation-wise, in the United States. The idea that some actuary somewhere pores over news stories like this, and when they find someone who married someone they don't plan to have children with, as a means of gaining coverage, they report it to the legal department or something. It's how people like Brian Thompson become the villains in their own murders; the idea that they're so grasping, and so petty, that nothing that gives them a reason to deny people is off the table. And so Mathew doesn't give his full name, even though there's likely enough information in the story that a sufficiently determined insurance company employee could likely figure out who he was.

But I think that this goes beyond a problem with corporate reputations. Just like with science, it's not clear that there's nothing about corporations that render them inherently untrustworthy. So this becomes yet another story about a lack of trust in people. And there's no shortage of those. The United States is a society of people who constantly fear that others are out to get them, or get over on them, because everything is zero-sum. Everything that anyone wants has to be taken from someone else, and if that person (or persons) isn't ready, willing and able to go to extraordinary lengths of protect what's theirs, they lose out. And that's all that matters.