Blue Cross Blue Shield Louisiana authorized mastectomies and breast reconstructions for women with cancer but refused to pay one Louisiana hospital’s full bills. A jury found the insurer liable for fraud and awarded the hospital $421 million — one of the largest verdicts ever to a single medical practice outside of a class-action lawsuit. 

ProPublica reporter T. Christian Miller talks through his investigation on this groundbreaking verdict against Blue Cross that exposes how insurers try to wield power over doctors and other health care providers.

“I told her to keep going out, to be with her community. I wanted her to live her life. And then she got abducted in broad daylight.”

— E., an Arab American academic and friend of Rümeysa Öztürk, the Tufts student whose arrest by federal agents was captured on video. E. asked ProPublica to withhold her name and other identifying details for security reasons, but spoke with reporter Hannah Allam about her friend’s journey from Ph.D. scholar to Trump target.