jonetta rose barras: The story about the slaying of DC’s proverbial white whale

Since 2020, when Mayor Muriel Bowser and her deputy mayor for health and human services, Wayne Turnage, decided to reorganize the city’s multibillion-dollar Medicaid managed care program in the middle of an unprecedented global pandemic, the duo has seemed engaged in a Moby Dick-esque fight with Amerigroup DC, now known as Wellpoint.

Given Turnage’s direct and seemingly obsessive efforts to prevent Wellpoint from winning and retaining a portion of that lucrative contract, was he Captain Ahab, sans prosthetics? Was Adrian Jordan, then-president and chief executive officer of Wellpoint DC, the elusive white whale?