Last week California health insurance giant Blue Cross instigated a scandal by sending letters and medical coverage applications to doctors, hoping that doctors would reveal if any patients had unreported previous medical conditions. In the case that they did, and their doctor reported them, that person's health insurance could be rescinded.

Doctors, and the public, were outraged. Not only did this represent a breach of doctor/patient confidentiality, but seemed to prove that health insurance agencies don't really care about people, they care about money.

Blue Cross has since stopped sending the forms and letters, arguing still that this was a standard means of keeping down costs.

But taking things even farther, a California lawmaker has introduced legislation that would require state regulators to sign off before carriers drop policyholders for allegedly failing to disclose preexisting medical conditions.

As it's reported at the Los Angeles Times, Assemblyman Hector De La Torre said his bill was needed because insurance companies "were not intending to abide by the spirit" of a law he wrote last year prohibiting health insurance carriers from refusing to pay medical bills for previously authorized services.

Will the bill pass? It's not yet clear, but this is just one of the latest in a series of legislative, regulatory and legal actions in California in response to aggressive efforts by insurers and health maintenance organizations to drop patients.

And as more legislation crops up designed to protect consumers in today's health insurance market, the public and media attention focused on insurance agencies can only be a good thing