More Insurance Stuff

[talon]

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE62G2DO20100317

Cases like this are precisley why insurance companies should be eliminated and a Medical Account System put in place.
Don Hamm, the CEO and President of Assurant Health Hamm asserted that rescission was "one of many protections supporting the affordability and viability of individual health insurance in the United States under our present system."

But state regulators, federal and congressional investigators, and consumer advocates say that in only a tiny percentage of cases of people who have had their health insurance canceled was there a legitimate reason.

A 2007 investigation by a California state regulatory agency, the California Department of Managed Health Care, bore this out. The DMHC randomly selected 90 instances in which Anthem Blue Cross of California, one of WellPoint's largest subsidiaries, canceled the insurance of policy holders after diagnoses with costly or life-threatening illnesses to determine how many were legally justified.

The result: The agency concluded that Anthem Blue Cross lacked legal grounds for canceling policies in every single instance.

Rescission is one of many reasons I despise health insurance. I can enumerate all the reasons health insurance as it currently exists needs to go away - and they far, far outweigh any benefits health insurance now provides.
"We can achieve the goal we share -- providing health care coverage for all Americans," Hamm said. "If a system can be created where coverage is available to everyone and all Americans are required to participate, the process we are addressing today, rescission, becomes unnecessary." - Yes, but at what cost? The insurance companies want us by our short hairs, no regulation, no oversight, no limits to what they can charge for "health care" and seriously restrict the care patients receive - putting things off until the patient either heals without care or dies - or the condition is so advanced it now takes extreme measures to cure or fix. I do not want insurance companies involved in health care decisions.

The injury to my wrist from December's fall would have been diagnosed, treated, and healed in pre-insurance days by now. As it is under insurance, 3 months later, I'm still in the "diagnostic" phase of care because the insurance company only approves one test at a time and takes weeks to approve each test. I'm sure they're hoping the wrist will heal all by itself (well, I do, too), but it's obviously not, and these delays are only making the problem worse and ultimately more expensive to fix.

It's the insurance way.

There are better ways that are ultimately both more humane and less expensive. I've outlined 2 different ways in this very blog over the past 5 years and I'm sure there are others that will work, too.

Insurance, very obviously, isn't working well.