The private health insurance industry makes its profits by rescission which is the policy of canceling the medical insurance of policyholders who come down with illnesses which are expensive to treat.
From the LA Times:
An investigation by the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations showed that health insurers WellPoint Inc., UnitedHealth Group and Assurant Inc. canceled the coverage of more than 20,000 people, allowing the companies to avoid paying more than $300 million in medical claims over a five-year period.
It also found that policyholders with breast cancer, lymphoma and more than 1,000 other conditions were targeted for rescission and that employees were praised in performance reviews for terminating the policies of customers with expensive illnesses.
It is totally immoral and unethical to cancel a person's medical insurance at the moment of their greatest need and this fact alone should be reason enough to adopt a public national health care plan. At least rescission should be outlawed. The health insurance industry makes its profits by denying people coverage.
When are the American people going to wise up and recognize that the health care insurance industry is at root unethical and demand public health care that isn't canceled after they get sick? No wonder the single greatest cause of bankruptcy is medical expense. It shouldn't be this way. Big Insurance is counting on the fact that only a small minority of its policyholders is affected by policy cancellation and bankruptcy and the rest of relatively healthy policyholders don't give a hoot about the ones who are.
You know, these policies by the health insurance industry are very similar to Enron's energy policies which resulted in "screwing Grandmas in California," as one of the Enron traders said. Unfettered capitalism leads to greed running amok and ruining people's lives while the CEOs and other executives take home obscene amounts of money. Bill McGuire of United Health Care left with over a billion dollars! That money was made by denying sick people their health insurance claims. It is tantamount to a death sentence for many patients and it is ruining the lives of countless others as they file for bankruptcy. Obama's mother herself was a victim of the health insurance industry since, as recounted by Obama, she had to argue with the insurance company over her coverage as she was dying of cancer.
Doctors, nurse and hospitals used to be there to heal and to help sick patients. They were "helpers" dedicated to improving peoples' lives and restoring their health so they could go on to live productive lives. They were "good" people. My father, Clifton Lawrence, served for 20 years as President of the Board of the Alexander Linn hospital in Sussex, NJ. He wasn't paid for his efforts. It was community service. Today it's all about profit and obscene profit at that; it's about lucre. Nothing that's not lucrative is worth doing according to the prevailing economic philosophy. Community service is out the window - defenestrated. Who needs to be defenestrated are the CEOs of the insurance companies whose stock-in-trade is denying people the help they need in order to make obscene profits for their corporations.
More from the LA Times article:
But rescission victims testified that their policies were canceled for inadvertent omissions or honest mistakes about medical history on their applications. Rescission, they said, was about improving corporate profits rather than rooting out fraud.
"It's about the money," said Jennifer Wittney Horton, a Los Angeles woman whose policy was rescinded after failure to report a weight-loss medication she was no longer taking and irregular menstruation.
"Insurers ignore the law, and when they find a discrepancy or omission, they rescind the policy and refuse to pay any of your medical bills -- even for routine treatment or treatment they previously authorized," Horton said.
She and others from around the country accused insurers in testimony of gaming anti-fraud laws to take policyholders' premiums, only to drop people who developed serious illnesses. They testified that they or a deceased loved one had had policies canceled over innocent mistakes and inadvertent omissions on their applications.
A Texas nurse said she lost her coverage, after she was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer, for failing to disclose a visit to a dermatologist for acne.
The sister of an Illinois man who died of lymphoma said his policy was rescinded for the failure to report a possible aneurysm and gallstones that his physician noted in his chart but did not discuss with him.
The committee's investigation found that WellPoint's Blue Cross targeted individuals with more than 1,400 conditions, including breast cancer, lymphoma, pregnancy and high blood pressure. And the committee obtained documents that showed Blue Cross supervisors praised employees in performance reviews for rescinding policies.
One employee, for instance, received a perfect 5 for "exceptional performance" on an evaluation that noted the employee's role in dropping thousands of policyholders and avoiding nearly $10 million worth of medical care.
Committee members took turns, alternating Democrats and Republicans, condemning such practices.
"When times are good, the insurance company is happy to sign you up and take your money in the form of premiums," said Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.). "But when times are bad . . . some insurance companies use a technicality to justify breaking its promise, at a time when most patients are too weak to fight back."Robert Reich has a memo to Obama posted on his blog about what the President must do to save public universal health care.
