L.A. says Health Net illegally halts insurance

[Newsjock]

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

Los Angeles' city attorney has sued Health Net Inc. - one of California's largest insurers - accusing the company of unlawful and deceptive business practices for canceling coverage after patients make medical claims.

Rocky Delgadillo said the insurer, which is based in Woodland Hills (Los Angeles County), saved more than $35 million in medical expenses by illegally rescinding the policies of at least 1,600 members. The lawsuit was filed Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court.

... Delgadillo said he's also initiating a criminal investigation into Health Net's practice of awarding employee bonuses for meeting annual goals for policy rescissions. State regulators in November fined Health Net $1 million for lying to investigators about engaging in this practice.

... Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo has set up a Web site to collect information from consumers, doctors and hospitals as part of the office's ongoing investigation into the potentially unlawful and fraudulent activities of health insurance companies: www.protectingtheinsured.org.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/22/BUIVV6HTF.DTL

[Redstone]

1. No, couldn't be. An insurance company doing sleazy, illegal things to keep from

paying for people's medical bills? The ones the people paid their premiums in order to get?

In America? Especially HealthNet?

(I'm not criticizing you for posting this, just ranting about those evil bastards of insurance companies.)

Redstone

[caligirl]

2. BC BS sent a recent letter to HMO doctors asking them to report on patients

who have what could be symptoms of a chronic condition existing prior to the insurance policy. Doctors sent it to the state agency in disgust. The department of managed health care is looking into it. They fined BCBS a paltry 1 mil for rescissions of individual plans last year.

[Selatius]

3. A million dollar fine is nothing, just a slap on the wrist, really.

They can do it again next year and the year after that and still only be mildly inconvenienced.

Do people honestly expect the corporation to put people's health above its fiduciary responsibility to generate profits for shareholders? I DON'T THINK SO. If you want to put health above profit margins, start up non-profits or let the government offer non-profit health insurance.

[Trillo]

4. Why is health "insurance" legal?

Campaign contributions?