This sort of attitude is unfortunatly not relegated to the private sector. Anyone who’s been on welfare (that includes Soviet Canuckistan, btw) knows how the people who are supposed to be here to help are in fact in an antagonistic relationship with you, and that their job consists more of trying to find a technicality to deny you a check than trying to find the best way in which you could be helped out of your problems.

The irony, of course, is that this stems mostly from the neoliberal insistence that state services should be run like a business, costs should be minimized and *profits* realized. So any problems you have with state services is likely to be due to the very people who rail against the welfare state’s problems.

This can’t be said enough—insurance companies are not in the business of paying for health care—they’re in the business of denying health care, because paying for health care cuts into profits, and making profits is the raison d’etre for any corporation. I think the Ferengi would look at the health insurance industry and be impressed at the quality of scam they’re running.

I was just listening to that episode of This American Life a couple days ago. Scary, actually, that no one seems to give a shit about this.

Also: The Quebec government under the Liberal party (center-right) decided to makes changes to their program that seeks to detect welfare fraudsters. It cost 6 million dollars extra. The number of people they found that were receiving checks they shouldn’t be? Six.

And for our American friends, I assure you that no welfare recipient has ever received a million dollar yearly in welfare checks.

The past few weeks I’ve been ecstatic to see someone going after the phone companies for the voicemail BS. (I know the insurance companies are much, much worse but stay with me here.) This has been a pet conspiracy theory of mine for years, during which time my friends all looked at me as though I was a raving lunatic.

BlackBloc:What’s at play there, is the very common mix-up between macro and micro level issues. In all too many issues, people tend to focus on the individual experience without taking the greater whole into account. In this case, they think that jobs are there for the taking (when unemployment is high as it is), when in reality it’s probably near a zero-sum game. If that person isn’t taking unemployment, that means somebody else probably is.

And just to show that it’s not a one-sided thing, this mix-up also happens among the left with people who think that more education is the solution for economic woes and declining wages. It’s good for the individual, of course, and maybe even the society, but it does relatively little to increase demand for that skill set (Unless it does via declining wages, which is of course a bad thing)

I’m no big fan of rescission, but let me explain how it works. 

When you aopply for insurance, you have to fill out a questionaire, asking questions about specific prior illnesses during a specified time period. An example from a cse on my desk: “Has any proposed insured been diagnosed with, treated for, or taken medication for disease of the circulatory system, including stroke, TIA (Transient Ischemic Attack) or aneurism?” 

If you answer that question, “no,” and the answer is really,“yes,” you are obviously going to have a problem with your coverage.

Note that the test of a “material misrepresentation” justifying rescission is not just whether the misrepresentation had something to do with the condition for which the insured seeks treatment—the insurer can also rescind if it would not have issued the policy if it had known the truth, even if the undisclosed condition had nothing whatever to do with insured’s subsequent illness—which explains why a misrepresentation regarding acne can lead to denial of converage for cancer.

Note also that the insurer has to ask the question—it can’t simply take the position that there was something important they didn’t ask about, but which the applicant ought to have known to disclose.

The real problems with rescission for material misrepresentations are:
(1) health insurers ought not to be able to refuse to insure people with pre-existing conditions.
(2) Applications commonly require an applicant to have a high degree of knowledge regarding their health status (the lady in the case I mentioned above probably didn’t know what “Transient Ischemic Attack” meant, or that she’d had one).
(3) there are not enough penalties to deter insurers from litigation dubious issues and losing.

The insurance companies hold all the cards.  Almost no one will have the financial, legal, and physical resources available to fight a recscission - whether justified or not - while also fighting cancer.  They’re betting on you dying before having to pay anything, and figure its cheaper to settle with your heirs than to pay for the treatment you paid them for.

Unjustified delay and denial of service should be prosecuted in criminal court, not civil court.  Letting someone die to make a profit is murder, not breach of contract.

rea,
There’s really only a couple of solutions to the problems with the way insurance companies abuse recission—and they do abuse the practice. You can make it illegal to deny anyone coverage or charge them more for a pre-existing condition or you can institute a single-payer plan. Anything else leaves people with health problems shit out of luck.

Rea, I know how it’s excused.  That isn’t the same as how it works.

Hold it. The capitalist class is comprised of blood-sucking parasites? Who’d have guessed?

At the end of the day, the system is based on a false premise, which is that insurance companies are betting that you won’t get sick, which means they reserve the right to act betrayed and indignant when you demonstrate that you’re a flesh and blood human being whose body is susceptible to illness.

This is why comparing health insurance to car insurance is so stupid.  Your car insurance only covers one thing:  physical damage to your car from an accident or other outside forces (like theft).  If you have mechanical problems with the car, you’re supposed to take care of it yourself.

So let’s apply that to health insurance.  If you’re going to say that health insurance is exactly like car insurance, then health insurers should only be covering you in case of an actual accident, not an illness.  But that’s not what they claim to do.  They say they’ll cover you in case of illness so you’ll give them your money, and then try to find every excuse possible to not cover you if you try to make a claim.

Note also that the insurer has to ask the question—it can’t simply take the position that there was something important they didn’t ask about, but which the applicant ought to have known to disclose.

Funny, that didn’t stop Blue Cross or Health Net in California from canceling dozens of policies that the Department of Insurance looked at and determined were wrongly canceled.  My favorite was the woman who discovered that she had a genetic eye disease that hadn’t manifested itself in any of her relatives, but Blue Cross canceled her policy because she should have instinctively known her full genetic makeup and been able to disclose a genetic disease that no one else in her family had developed.

Not to mention that Blue Cross likes to gather evidence that could be used to rescind someone’s policy but hold onto it until the policyholder’s expenses exceed their premiums.  In other words, they don’t rescind your policy because you lied or made mistakes on your application.  If you pay more in premiums than your medical care costs them, they’ll never bother to cancel you, even if you out-and-out lied to them.  It’s only when you start costing them money that they paw through 20 years of your medical records to find one mention of an acne treatment that they can use as an excuse to cancel your policy.

Your car insurance only covers one thing:  physical damage to your car from an accident or other outside forces (like theft).

No, that’s not right.  It also covers you for liability for bodily injury or property damages arising out of your use of an auto (within certain limits), and in many states, provides some medical coverage for injuries incurred in a motor vehicle accident.  In my state, Michigan, most of your premium goes for medical coverage, although Michigan is something of an outlier in this respect.  And the “rescission for material misrepresentation” issues arise in auto insurance cases all the time.

“This has been a pet conspiracy theory of mine for years, during which time my friends all looked at me as though I was a raving lunatic.”

There was actually an episode of Metalocalypse a couple year ago where the practice was taken to its logical conclusion, with a voicemail access system whose menu took several minutes to navigate, that was described as designed to eat up minutes.

Mnemosyne, I can’t rule out the possibility that California has some wierd pro-insurer rule about rescission—I’m admitted to the bar only in Michigan.  But note also the nontrivial distinction between circumstances in which the insurer is legally entitled to rescind, and circumstances in which the insurer will refuse to pay until ordered by the court.

At the risk of outing myself, I will say that the part of my comment you block quoted is backed up by my win for my clients here:

http://coa.courts.mi.gov/documents/opinions/final/coa/20060523_c265697_46_265697.opn.pdf

Hold it. The capitalist class is comprised of blood-sucking parasites? Who’d have guessed?

I’m spitting out champagne and losing my monocle from shock!

Health insurance companies are wicked.  I don’t know how anyone can defend them with a straight face. Sure, there might have been one point in time when they weren’t wicked, but they are now. Seriously, if this health insurance bill doesn’t pass/passes with a tepid set of milquetoast restrictions on insurance companies, I’m moving to another country.  If the wealthiest country in the world can’t attend to the basic needs of it’s citizens, then something is just wrong.

Having people’s healthcare be determined on a for-profit basis is crazy. It’s like looking at church as a for-profit enterprise… (pauses. looks around at the types of people who are fighting hardest against healthcare reform. sighs.)

Never mind.

And the voicemail thing is the reason I’ve taken to texting. I hate talking on the phone anyway and most phone calls are really just to convey small pieces of information, so we text in my family. So much less disruptive.

It looks like I am now a victim of the fucked up racket that is called United Health Care.

You see, I’m a grad student who has the option of buying a student health insurance plan through my school that is administered by UHC Student Resources.  And as I don’t have any other insurance, it seemed prudent that I should buy this insurance at a relatively low cost (I say “relatively” with a huge grain of salt).

I spent last month out in Arizona and quickly found myself in the hospital with a DVT in my leg.  It’s my second DVT in 3 years, and I am neither diabetic nor overweight, nor overly sedentary in my lifestyle.  I have no idea why I, a 34 year old male with no real history of health problems would get not one, but TWO blood clots in a 3 year timespan.

The first time I had a DVT, I was uninsured.  And the moment I was told that I needed to be hospitalized, I freaked out thinking about the bill.  Fortunately, the hospital that I went to was able to make a very generous financial arrangement with me an cut my bill down to about 10% of what it initially was, provided I pay it on the spot.  I borrowed the money to get it taken care of.

So when I experienced my second DVT a few weeks ago and spent a week in the hospital, I was tremendously relieved with the knowledge that this time I was insured, and the bill would be mostly taken care of.

Or at least I thought.

I am in fact insured, the policy is good for another month, the hospital submitted the claim, and whaddaya know?  DENIED.

I haven’t yet called UHC to try to address this (just found out 2 days ago), because I seriously am afraid that I will threaten to go postal on them.

For the time being, I owe Scottsdale Hospital $16,000.  That I most certainly don’t have.

So I say to the CEO of UHC, Stephen Hemsley, you pigfucker pile of human dog shit stain on humanity, I hope you get a horrifically painful and gruesome flesh-eating disease that kills you slowly in the most agonizingly painful manner humanly imagineable.  Asshole.

I’ve found one-star-pound to be really useful in getting around those mandatory voice mail messages, incidentally.

/mildly OT

Amanda:

(Don’t worry—-I don’t have cancer.)

We’re still visualizing a healthy cervix and vulva for you.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, JohnGor0?!?

Rea, I know how it’s excused.  That isn’t the same as how it works.

Amanda, I’m certainly not trying to excuse insurers—I’m on the other side.  On a good day, I eat insurers for lunch . . . 

I haven’t yet called UHC to try to address this (just found out 2 days ago), because I seriously am afraid that I will threaten to go postal on them.

Condolences, and I hope you feel better soon. And understand that they usually deny the initial coverage just to see who will give up and go away. You’re in for a few days or weeks of phone tag, but one strategy is to get the hospital billing and your claims person on the phone at the same time, three-way, so they can’t snowball you. There’s absolutely no reason you have to be a go-between for a dick-swinging-via-paperwork contest.

Our insurance company is doing less and less for us. We were recently informed that they’d pay only 50% of a test, and if the results were negative, they’d pay nothing.

A friend is sitting with a child in severe pain. He broke an arm and collar bone and was seen in the ER. He is to see an orthopedic surgeon immediately, but the insurance company says they need 72 hours to authorize a treatment plan *before* the surgeon can be seen. If she makes the appointment before approval, the insurance company will pay nothing.

None of this makes any sense.

I don’t know if this is still true, but about 15 years ago, I had a conversation with a person who’s work was to assemble financing for huge projects, like malls and skyscrapers. I asked him who had the wherewithal to finance skyscrapers, and he said insurance companies. “They’re the only ones with the money on hand to finance this stuff”.

At the time, he pointed out the Prudential Building, Sears Tower, and the John Handcock building as examples.

Again, I don’t know if it’s still true, but it made sense at the time.

P.S. Now the latest building being finished on Michigan Ave (Chicago) is Trump Tower. Is Casino money supplanting Insurance capital?

Fatman - Wikipedia on Colposcapy, and visualization.

I use The Silva Method for visualization and self-maintainence. It’s a form of meditation. Too much information, I know.

“None of this makes any sense.”

Well, it makes sense from the perspective of the for-profit insurer.  They’re demanding that the parents put off a surgeon appointment or surgery in an emergency, with the definite result that their child’s suffering is much greater and the possible result of their child’s injury going from bad to significantly worse.  Odds are quite good that in at least some cases like this, the parents will not be willing to risk potentially maiming their child in order to get their insurer to cover x% of the visit, in which case the insurer will quite happily follow through on their promise of not paying one thin dime towards whatever bill gets racked up.  And in the other cases, well, it’s not like the agents or adjusters are the ones sitting there with an injured child who can’t see the proper doctor until the omens are good and the stars are right.

He is to see an orthopedic surgeon immediately, but the insurance company says they need 72 hours to authorize a treatment plan *before* the surgeon can be seen.

But, but, we have the bestest health care system in the history of the whole wide world! No waiting like with evil Canuck socialism! The wingnuts told me this so it must be true!

Anybody who thinks this kind of shit can be regulated away- or that these pigfuckers won’t use even lame-ass enforcement of lame-ass regulations as an excuse to jack up premiums even more- is dreaming.

I’m losing interest by the minute in passage of the Obama Health Insurer Bailout Act of 2009. There is NO real reform short of putting the bloodsucking parasites out of business for good. And that will only be possible when this mishegoss collapses of its own weight- which it will, sooner than people think, as long as we refrain from an ill-advised bailout.

Unjustified delay and denial of service should be prosecuted in criminal court, not civil court.  Letting someone die to make a profit is murder, not breach of contract.

No, it is only murder if a woman terminates a pregnancy.  People dying for lack of health care and children suffering needlessly for days and probably incurring much larger charges for nerve and other needless damage?  That’s God’s Will!

So is needless death or fetal death due to lack of health care.  Again, god’s will!

Its only murder if it involves a woman’s will or rights and a fertilized egg.

There is a similar, though far less disastrous parallel with credt card companies and late fees that I think explains the mentality.  At one time, late fees on a credit card made some sense: They kicked in after an interval where a responsible person could be reasonably expected to make a payment.  On one hand, they were a mild slap on the wrist to the borrower.  On the other, it was some compensation to the lender for having to carry you longer than agreed.

Then some greedy bastard looked at a spreadsheet and noticed that late fees were revenue. And that the bank gets to set the terms where a late fee will be applied.  And that there’s pretty much no regulation on that.  And that’s when banks started to get creative with structuring the way their billing works to ensure maximum late fees. I recently made a payment on my Visa on the day before it was due, using the bank’s own online payment system to do a fund transfer from my checking account (at another financial institution).  I got a late fee.  Why? Well, because the bank didn’t schedule my fund transfer until the day AFTER payment was due because of ‘high volume’.  Oddly, I’ve never seen a charge delayed because of high volume. But hey, I just design large scale IT systems, how would I know why it is so much more difficult to process an electronic payment than an electronic charge?

In both cases, something originally seen as a penalty or way to encourage ‘good behavior’ on the part of the consumer (Pay on time.  Don’t lie about your health history.) got noticed by some greedy bastard trying to pad the bottom line.  In both cases, the company stopped looking at these situations as an unpleasant, but necessary part of doing business, to a way of extracting money from the consumer without having to provide any sort of service in return. And both provide cover for the corporation because the name didn’t change, nor did the official definition.  So anyone suggesting change can be looked on with horror “What? You would have us insure someone who LIED about their medical condition when they applied for insurance?  We would be destroyed!”

Greedy bastards.

Liberal party (center-right)

I wouldn’t characterize the liberals as “center-right” on an American blog. Although true for the Canadian system the American system would probably refer to them as the “The Crazy Socialist” party and they would be to the left of most Democrats.

You want “petty” name-calling, assholes?  How about you just go fuck yourselves instead?

No kidding.  This whole circus is a really good way to loose any shred of faith one has in humanity.  The greed, the posturing, the lies… these people definitely need to be subjected to more than just some name-calling.

JadedOptimist, not only does recission reduce claims paid out, the insurance company has absolutely no motivation to do it up front!  That means, they don’t look too close or ask too many specific questions or do a review up front because they want your premiums.  They do it retroactively because they don’t want to pay the claims.  Maximizes income while minimizing pay out.

“And that’s when banks started to get creative with structuring the way their billing works to ensure maximum late fees.”

And before that, they just held your mail for a few business days before sending it over to A/R in the hopes that this would put you past the due date.

About a dozen years ago, I had a three-month wait to go on an employer-based health plan, and looked around for a gap policy.

Went to an insurance broker, who advised me that my $25 a month (retail) prescription would mean Blue Cross/Blue Shield would refuse to cover me.

He also advised me to lie and leave the prescription off the policy—which would have meant the insurance agent collected his fees, Blue Cross collected my premiums, and if something expensive happened to me, Blue Cross could have dumped me.

I was livid—and chose to go without health insurance for three months rather than play the shell game.

Ms Kate -

the insurance company has absolutely no motivation to do it up front!

A very reasonable (meaning heavily weighted towards the insurance companies) solution would be to get a physical, and give the insurance companies access to medical records, and give them a finite window within which to turn down a request for a policy, putting a modicum of risk on their shoulders.

Of course, I hate insurance companies, and think anyone who makes over $100k a year in the industry should be taxed at 91%. There should be NO option for insurance companies to turn down, or deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions. Imagine a middleman in our food chain that made it cost-prohibitive for most families to afford fresh fruits and vegetables, forcing a good third of our population to live on and raise their kids on peanut butter and ramen noodles.

Oh wait…

preying mantis -

And before that, they just held your mail for a few business days before sending it over to A/R in the hopes that this would put you past the due date.

I drink too much, and sometimes, have too much time on my hands. I always call and fight late fees. If you keep them on the line and don’t swear, they will give in. If they hang up, I call back, explain that I patiently tried to explain my situation, and the manager was rude and hung up. They give right in. When truly insane, and just reading the internet late at night while finishing up the bottle of Cabernet, I’ve called them and asked why their monthly statement was late, and demanded that they waive any late fees because of their slothful negligence.

But I’m really an idiot.

Here’s my proposed scam:

Open a hot dog stand, or something, and employ an amount of people above the legal amount of employees that an insurance company cannot deny group coverage to. Only hire people with chronic conditions, cancer, diabetes, etc. Everybody works for minimum wage (or salary), but they get to pay whatever their share of health insurance costs.

The hot dog stand might even make a few dollars.

There is a similar, though far less disastrous parallel with credt card companies and late fees that I think explains the mentality.

Utilities too.  I got my water/sewer bill.  About $20.  Total paid?  $40.  100% fees.  There’s the supposedly one time $10 activation fee (every time you move).  The $4 (20%) monthly fee.  And then, since I got my bill a week before the due date and they require payment 5 business days before the due date to avoid late fees, I had my choice of either a $7.50 late fee or a $7 online payment fee.  Cute, no?  Even assuming that I get future bills on time, and that they’re processed on time, the 20% administrative fee is obscene, but with the rest of it… that should be criminal.

About a dozen years ago, I had a three-month wait to go on an employer-based health plan, and looked around for a gap policy.

One thing that bugs the shit out of me looking at these discussions from the outside - you people seem to be so blase about the amount of your goddamned time and effort wasted by your fractured system.  The only think I can compare it to are stories out of the old Soviet Union about people spending half a day waiting patiently in line to be served at a supermarket or something.

Here’s a proposal for health-care - every person gets to claim $50 an hour off their insurance premiums for the time they spend chasing paper or waiting on the phone trying to deal with companies.  I guarantee you you’ll have efficient electronic systems to give you yes/no answers within a week.

But note also the nontrivial distinction between circumstances in which the insurer is legally entitled to rescind, and circumstances in which the insurer will refuse to pay until ordered by the court.

Assuming you can afford a lawyer while you’re trying to pay for your chemotherapy out of pocket, or find one who will take your case on contingency while it drags out for four or five years.  That’s kind of the point.  Having to fight your health insurer for every morsel of care is a nontrivial chunk of time for most people.  My old boss had to fight with her insurance company for four years over a test they did the day her daughter was born.  She spent two hours a day on the phone with them trying to figure out who could help her. 

And if you think about it, what the hell does car insurance have to do with medical care?  If we didn’t have our completely bizarre system of “health insurance,” you wouldn’t have to have medical coverage on your car insurance.  But it seems totally normal to us that, yes, part of your car insurance premium covers medical bills that might result from an accident on the assumption that, otherwise, everyone injured will have to sue each other to be able to afford medical care since there’s no way their existing health insurance (if any) will cover them.

“One thing that bugs the shit out of me looking at these discussions from the outside - you people seem to be so blase about the amount of your goddamned time and effort wasted by your fractured system.”

Probably only because fury and bile don’t carry well over the internet.  I have really good health insurance and it’s still a good thing the force isn’t strong with me when I had to navigate a complex automated phone system when trying to contact my carrier to make sure the ER I was taking my husband to over a (probably, at the time) nothing incident was in network.  People would have wound up ten different kinds of choked.  Never mind the parent who’s just been told they have to wait 72 hours before their kid can see a definitely-needed surgeon, or the patient whose claim has been auto-denied and now it’s up to them to demonstrate to the insurance company that no, they are covered.

Piator has a crucial point: when a company comes after you for money, they’re allowed (ahem) to tack on whatever it costs them to track you down and force you to cough up. But when you act as a benefits consultant explaining the errors in an insurance company’s bill or educating them in the ways that their actions fail to match the rules laid down in their contract, you do it for free.

Before I had kids, I used to take a perverse satisfaction in keeping the customer-service people at certain organizations on the phone until the costs of dealing with the complaint had far exceeded the amount the company expected to net. But it really didn’t measure up.

Oh, and the other thing on rescission: when an insurance company loses its gamble, the most it ever refunds is the premiums paid (if that).  If you’re not going to pay my claims, I want what I could have gotten by investing in Apple at the founder price and selling out at $200 a share. Just as likely, after all…

I’ve advocated a lemon law for insurance.  If you file a claim and are denied, then the insurance company has to refund all the money you ever paid them (or since they last paid out to you).

I’ve advocated a lemon law for insurance.  If you file a claim and are denied, then the insurance company has to refund all the money you ever paid them (or since they last paid out to you).

That doesn’t work - they contract to provide specific types of cover in exchange for premiums; they have a right to deny payment if your claim is not covered.

From what I understand from a quick search on rescission, they *do* refund your premiums.  This is, of course, not good enough if they rescind based on a cost evaluation of individual cases - its like betting on a coin toss, and being able to claim backsies when you lose.

Went to an insurance broker, who advised me that my $25 a month (retail) prescription would mean Blue Cross/Blue Shield would refuse to cover me.

He also advised me to lie and leave the prescription off the policy—which would have meant the insurance agent collected his fees

Well (1) generally, the agent must refund his commission from the insurer when a policy is rescinded, and (2) in my state, at least, any agent who solicits health or disability insurance is deemed an agent of the insurer.

I agree with Preying Mantis—the time spent on navigating the system makes my head want to explode.  I probably spent 50 hours total applying for private insurance for my husband, who is a national-level athlete with a resting heartbeat of about 40.  He was denied by 3 or 4 different insurers before we could get him a policy.  The premium they offered us was raised within 4 months, even though we haven’t used the insurance since starting it.  I have a benign cyst on my thyroid that has been swelling and sore, but I’m too afraid to go to the doctor about it, because I’m trying to get private insurance myself, and if I so much as get it checked out, it’s over.  I’ll never get coverage, or I’ll get it at a price that will break us.

Our system makes me so fucking angry.  I should email Ben Nelson’s office every time I’m working on some fucking insurance-related issue instead of doing something productive.

My suggestion is to copy and paste your stories into letters to your congresspeople…

This is pure insanity. I’m 50, and was recently diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, on top of existing preconditions of asthma, arthritis, osteoporosis and high cholesterol. In December I was hospitalized for five days for the MS, followed by two months of at home care from visiting nurses, occupational therapists and physical therapists. On Jan 1., my insurer changed. The company I work for had changed insurer options, and I couldnt stay with the old one.

Just give it a moment’s thought - how screwed up the paperwork on this could get. The home health people first billed the old insurer for post-Jan 1 visits. Two months later, I got a bill from them saying that the insurer had rejected this. (Well, yeah, they werent my insurer anymore and I’d given them the new information). So I called them, and they said no problem, they’d rebill.

This week I received a note from the new insurer saying that they wont pay for the visits because the insurance company was “late or incomplete” in submitting their bills, so I’m on the hook personally for the bill.

Meanwhile, my current monthly out of pocket expenses for medications (which dont count against my deductible) hovers around $700. I am also on a 1+1 program - insurance to cover just me and my son. We each have a $1200 deductible….but since we are considered “family coverage” the total deductible is $3600, not $2400.

After all of this, and on top of the out of pocket expenses, and the bill they wont pay…they have applied exactly $61.23 towards my deductible. I havent got a clue where they got this number from….and my out of pocket non prescription expenses have been close to $5000 on the year.

Can I please have single payer NOW???

BTW…my current insurer is also UHC, and I too have avoided calling them because I dont want to add
“blood pressure high enough to cause a stroke” to the list of my medical problems

My daughter was hit by a car - hit and run - in February and I am still spending several hours a week between talking to the providers that cared for her and now their collection agencies and my insurance. First they needed several levels of proof that she wasn’t insured on my auto policy, because apparently if you are hit by a car while walking down the street, your auto policy has to pay it. (I take her off my auto policy when she is in school because she goes to school in Hawaii and I live in Illinois, therefore there is zero chance that she will be driving my car, and keeping her on the policy doubles my premium.) Then they needed proof that there was no WAY the driver could be found, since clearly they are truly the liable party. I agree with that, actually, but ah… isn’t the part of the point of insurance to get you care and let them and their powerhouse legal team suss it out with everybody else? Then when they were satisfied that the driver couldn’t be found, they needed some sort of proof of ‘custody’ of my 19 year old college student. Er. She’s an adult now, no one has ‘custody’ of her. I’m allowed to continue her on my policy as she has been covered by it for 7 years now because she’s a full-time college student. So now the whole thing is ‘under review’. Again.

The saddest thing about it? The total amount is less than $3000. I just don’t happen to HAVE $3000 lying around and dammit - that’s WHY I have insurance already. I can’t imagine that the insurance company hasn’t already spent more than $3000 just thrashing around about this.

Sigh.

I’ve been saying for a while now that rescision is the perfect counter-argument to all the “socialized medicine” bullshit the insurance industry and their lap dogs are spewing out to scare Joe Six-Pack. There are literally thousands of stories of REAL individuals who were truly royally FUCKED by their insurance companies. Obama and the Dems should be hammering these stories home over and over and over.

Sure, nationalized healthcare makes sense from a fiscal standpoint, but arguing $ isn’t going to do it. Make people realize the very real possibility that Blue Cross might allow them to die because they answered a question incorrectly 20 years ago, and hearts and minds will change.

UHC is full of dumbassery, but thanks to dumbassery from a local hospital, the wife managed to get a cyst removed from her back for free, because the hospital kept telling UHC that my old and expired BCBS was still in force. So out of about $13000 in bills for a 15-minute operation, (that UHC would likely have paid about $2500 on) they got nothing. And because I screeched enough to UHC about it, I paid nothing.

If hospital billing departments didn’t charge so much to cover up their own asshattery, “costs” might actually be somewhat controlled.

Health “insurance” companies would still be evil, though.