Health Insurers “Lie, Cheat and Kill to Boost Profits”

[Joanne98]

ChattahBox)—Three innocuous looking insurance executives reminded us this week, why health reform of our country’s broken for-profit health care system desperately needs a public option.

Insurance executives from the top three major Health Insurance companies appeared before Congress on Tuesday, shamelessly admitting that they routinely cancelled medical coverage of seriously ill customers in a practice called rescission, leaving patients without health coverage, causing suffering, bankruptcy and even death.
All three executives politely and firmly refused, when asked by lawmakers to stop canceling coverage, unless they could show “intentional fraud,” on the part of their customers.

The investigation by the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations into the insidious practice of rescission, showed that WellPoint Inc., UnitedHealth Group and Assurant Inc. canceled the coverage of more than 20,000 people, resulting in the companies saving more than $300 million in unpaid medical claims over a five-year period.

The committee uncovered evidence that the insurance companies specifically targeted customers with major illnesses, such as breast cancer and lymphoma. Once a patient becomes sick, the insurance companies scour patient’s medical records and the fine print of the insurance contract, to find any excuse to deny coverage.

Whitney Horton testifying before the committee told the lawmakers how her health insurance with Blue Cross, a division of WellPoint, was retroactively cancelled, after she went for routine medical care. Her medical records included a notation from her doctor that he suspected she may have “polycystic ovaries,” but he never discussed it with her.

Not knowing of the doctor’s note, she didn’t include the condition on her health insurance application and yet the insurance company rescinded her coverage based on her “misrepresentation.” A nurse from Texas said she lost her coverage, after she was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer, for failing to disclose a visit to a dermatologist for acne.

Peggy Raddatz testified about her brother, Otto Raddatz, who died of lymphoma after his health insurance was cancelled soon after he became ill. The insurance company based the rescission on Otto’s omission of an aneurysm and gall stones on his application, conditions noted on his medical records by a doctor, but never disclosed to Otto.

Continued>>>
http://chattahbox.com/us/2009/06/18/health-insurers-lie-cheat-and-kill-to-boost-profits/

[unblock]

1. these examples are eggregious, but they demonstrate why insurance has no place in medicine.

insurance companies have three core competencies:
(1) selling
(2) investing
(3) denying and minimizing claim payments.

a.k.a:

(1) get the loot
(2) grow the loot
(3) keep the loot

their core competencies are actively damaging to the process of delivering good, efficient health care to patients. genuine reform of health care would involve scrapping insurance-based access and replacing it with something better suited for delivering good, respoonsible medical care.


what are these people supposed to do, get insurance in case their health insurance coverage fails to pay??

[FiveGoodMen]

3. "get insurance in case their health insurance coverage fails to pay??"

Aflac!

Isn't that pretty much what they're selling?

[unblock]

5. it doesn't cover the shortage if insurance denied you because you failed to jump over a silly hurdle

aflac pays a fixed benefit if you're sick or injured, you can use it on anything you want. it's designed to cover the sort of expenses that health insurance doesn't cover, like transportation to medical facilities, additional childcare expenses while you're in the hospital, loss of bonus opportunities at work, etc.

it's not designed to cover your cancer treatments if your health insurance weasel out of covering you because you forgot to dot an i when you applied years ago.

[FiveGoodMen]

6. Ah. Thanks.

Either way, it just pisses me off that we spend so goddamned much for health insurance in the first place and along come these commercials that say you really need to buy more.

America is far and away the dumbest of the developed countries.

[unblock]

7. people idiotically equate poverty with laziness but in truth it's wealth that breeds laziness

poor people have to work their asses off to survive, the wealthy are just in it for fun and profit.

america has been the richest nation on earth for long enough to get spoiled and lazy about it. ameriCANS work hard, but we've pissed away our wealth on expensive cars and too much house and too much entertainment and fancy meals and generally acting as if money grew on trees. ameriCA decided that a surplus was too scary to contemplate and pissed away our future on absolute nothingness.

eventually the eu and/or bric will catch up to the us and we'll realize that we need to balance a budget when the economy is doing well, stimulate wisely when the economy is not, and pay attention to infrastructure, the environment and the distribution of wealth.

until then, we will only pay lip service to our severe structural problems.

[FiveGoodMen]

8. I recall a plan being floated at the end of Clinton's 2nd term that would pay off the debt

in 13 years.

I'm sure that was optimistic, but there was talk of such a plan.

Bush came into office and immediately cut taxes -- spending 35 million on letters just to tell us that he was going to do it!

He seemed hell-bent on putting us wildly into debt again many months before the war talk started to surface.

It's almost as if he -- and the people pulling his strings -- didn't want us to balance the budget and pay off the debt.

:tinfoilhat:

[unblock]

9. in fact greenspan testified what a disaster it would be to pay off the debt!

much of the shadow banking system is based on having a highly liquid risk-free debt market to hedge positions. if that were to vanish, who knows what would happen to all those other instruments.

it was an absolutely insane argument, because if it really were a problem, the government could borrow just for the hell of it. more importantly, if the government ever got close to completely paying off its debt, it would surely find a way to cut taxes and/or spend less. as it turns out, thanks to greenie's chicken little routine, we spent the last 8 years deficit-spending outselves into oblivion.

how quaint it now seems that we were momentarily worried about completely paying off the national debt!

[FiveGoodMen]

10. Well, I'm thinking that paying off the debt would have stopped the gravy train

for ... well, whoever it is that we owe the money to.

And I'm wondering if they didn't give Bush his marching orders about running the debt back up as fast as possible.

Meanwhile, I also seem to remember repukes in the 80's and 90's insisting that we cut social programs because we needed a balanced budget. "America can no longer afford..." began every speech.

Once it because a possibility, they didn't really jump at the chance, did they?

[unblock]

11. no, bondholders to NOT like increased debt, they prefer lower risk of default

no, it was the greedy high income bastards who wanted a ginormous tax cut when the economy was doing fine, and the defense industry who had to get their wars on to make big profits.

bush the dumber learned from poppy's "read me lips" thing that you NEVER raise income taxes EVER, no matter how absolutely necessary it is. yet he still had to pay off his big contributors, so he had to spend like a drunken sailor as well.

the whole crap about what a doomsday scenario paying off the debt was drove me crazy. you couldn't write farce like that, no one would buy it. it was a ludicrous argument for a tax cut, but they needed it and "bought" it because THERE WAS NO EXCUSE for shrub's tax cuts. you do NOT cut taxes when the economy is doing fine, you do NOT cut taxes in the face of war, you do NOT cut taxes for fear of paying back your debts.

it was just the emperor's new clothes. there was nothing there in reality, but it was a convenient fiction for those who were hell bent on raiding the treasury.

[FiveGoodMen]

12. Question: is the debt all in fixed-term bonds or is some of it just an ongoing loan

with interest-only payoff?

[unblock]

13. i don't believe the treasury has ever issued perpetuities.

[Raster]

2. Healthcare insurance organizations = parasites.

Plain and simple.:kick:

[FiveGoodMen]

4. Yes they are!

They take a big slice of everyone's money up front and a whole lot more if (when) they get sick.

[elehhhhna]

14. Class. Action. Suit...for fraud etc, Maybe RICO charges.

Put this in front of a jury and watch the fireworks.