U.S. to WellPoint: Stop dropping breast cancer patients
Fri Apr 23, 2010
Reuters
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has called on health insurer WellPoint to stop dropping coverage for patients recently diagnosed with breast cancer, calling the practice "deplorable."
In a letter dated April 22 to Angela Braly, WellPoint's chief executive, Sebelius said she was "surprised and disappointed" to learn from a Reuters report that the company had targeted women with breast cancer for aggressive investigation with intent to cancel their policies.
"As you know, the practice described in this article will soon be illegal," Sebelius wrote. "The Affordable Care Act specifically prohibits insurance companies from rescinding policies, except in cases of fraud or intentional misrepresentation of material fact."
Reuters reported on Thursday that WellPoint, the largest U.S. health insurer by enrollment, was using a computer algorithm that automatically targeted patients recently diagnosed with breast cancer, among other conditions.
The software triggered an immediate fraud investigation by the company as it searched for excuses to drop coverage, according to government regulators and investigators...
Showing posts with label death by insurance company. Show all posts
Showing posts with label death by insurance company. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Health Insurance Monopolies Are Legal
Health Insurance Monopolies Are Legal
October 29, 2009
Monica Sanchez
Campaign for America's Future
Health insurance companies are exempt from federal antitrust laws — laws that protect commerce from monopolies and unfair business practices in most other types of markets. As a result, health insurers have become highly concentrated and premiums have soared. There is movement on Capitol Hill to remove this exemption, but the best way to quickly infuse competition into health insurance markets across the country is with a strong, national public health insurance plan option.
The U.S. Senate debates insurance company protection
The Morality of Health Care Reform, pt. 6
By Terrance Heath
November 9, 2009
As the Senate Finance Committee moved into its fourth day of deliberations over the health care bill, tensions continued to rise.
Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), broke new ground defending an amendment he'd proposed that struck language from the bill defining which benefits employers are required to cover -- in this case, basic maternity care.
"I don't need maternity care," Kyl said. "So requiring that on my insurance policy is something that I don't need and will make the policy more expensive."
Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), interrupted Kyl: "I think your mom probably did."
The amendment was defeated, nine to 14.
Monday, October 12, 2009
CIGNA employee flips off mother of girl who died when transplant denied
CIGNA Employee Flips Off Mother Of Dead Girl Denied Transplant
The Huffington Post
Rachel Weiner
10- 8-09
A CIGNA employee gave the finger -- literally -- to a woman whose daughter died after the insurance giant refused to cover her liver transplant.
Hilda and Krikor Sarkisyan went to CIGNA's Philadelphia headquarters, along with supporters from the California Nurses Association, to confront the CEO Edward Hanway over the death of her 17-year-old child.
In 2007, Nataline Sarkisyan was denied a liver transplant by the company, on the grounds that the operation was "too experimental" to be covered. Nine days later it changed its mind, in response to protests outside its office. It was too late: Nataline died hours later.
"CIGNA killed my daughter," Nataline's mother Hilda told security. "I want an apology." Sarkisyan was not able to speak to Hanway; a communications specialist talked to her instead. After their conversation, employees heckled the group from a balcony; one man gave them the finger. CIGNA called the police and had the family and their friends escorted from the building...
"What unbelievable nerve," said Americans United For Change spokesman Jeremy Funk in a statement. "A case that should have prompted CIGNA to seriously reevaluate its policies instead led its employees to taunt and insult a grieving mother who lost her daughter. Absolutely sick. Does Congress need any more reasons to pass meaningful health insurance reform now?"
The Sarkisyan family's wrongful-death suit was thrown out of court because of a 1987 Supreme Court ruling that shields employer-paid health care plans from damages over their coverage decisions.
The Sarkisyans say the law needs to be changed to allow people to sue health insurers for these kinds of decisions.
[Maura Larkins comment: Do CIGNA employees stand around in the halls frequently, or were they allowed to do so on this day in particular to intimidate a grieving mother?]
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/08/cigna-employee-flips-off_n_314189.html
The Huffington Post
Rachel Weiner
10- 8-09
A CIGNA employee gave the finger -- literally -- to a woman whose daughter died after the insurance giant refused to cover her liver transplant.
Hilda and Krikor Sarkisyan went to CIGNA's Philadelphia headquarters, along with supporters from the California Nurses Association, to confront the CEO Edward Hanway over the death of her 17-year-old child.
In 2007, Nataline Sarkisyan was denied a liver transplant by the company, on the grounds that the operation was "too experimental" to be covered. Nine days later it changed its mind, in response to protests outside its office. It was too late: Nataline died hours later.
"CIGNA killed my daughter," Nataline's mother Hilda told security. "I want an apology." Sarkisyan was not able to speak to Hanway; a communications specialist talked to her instead. After their conversation, employees heckled the group from a balcony; one man gave them the finger. CIGNA called the police and had the family and their friends escorted from the building...
"What unbelievable nerve," said Americans United For Change spokesman Jeremy Funk in a statement. "A case that should have prompted CIGNA to seriously reevaluate its policies instead led its employees to taunt and insult a grieving mother who lost her daughter. Absolutely sick. Does Congress need any more reasons to pass meaningful health insurance reform now?"
The Sarkisyan family's wrongful-death suit was thrown out of court because of a 1987 Supreme Court ruling that shields employer-paid health care plans from damages over their coverage decisions.
The Sarkisyans say the law needs to be changed to allow people to sue health insurers for these kinds of decisions.
[Maura Larkins comment: Do CIGNA employees stand around in the halls frequently, or were they allowed to do so on this day in particular to intimidate a grieving mother?]
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/08/cigna-employee-flips-off_n_314189.html
Thursday, September 17, 2009
We need better evaluation for teachers--and doctors. Constant evaluation by professionals would be better than having jury trials re medical problems
#1 Doctors cover up for each other too much, allowing incompetent doctors continue to practice.
#2 Good doctors sometimes get sued for unpreventable tragedies, and juries who don't understand the complexities of these cases are asked to decide of the doctor acted properly.
As we talk about reforming medical the medical malpractice tort system, maybe we could solve problem #1 at the same time as problem #2.
Perhaps doctors who are currently evaluated as good could be given lower insurance rates.
But capping medical malpractice claims would only serve to encourage incompetent doctors. Insurance companies would have little to lose by insuring them.
#2 Good doctors sometimes get sued for unpreventable tragedies, and juries who don't understand the complexities of these cases are asked to decide of the doctor acted properly.
As we talk about reforming medical the medical malpractice tort system, maybe we could solve problem #1 at the same time as problem #2.
Perhaps doctors who are currently evaluated as good could be given lower insurance rates.
But capping medical malpractice claims would only serve to encourage incompetent doctors. Insurance companies would have little to lose by insuring them.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
The "death panels" are already here
Sorry, Sarah Palin -- rationing of care? Private companies are already doing it, with sometimes fatal results
Salon.com
By Mike Madden
Aug. 11, 2009
The future of healthcare in America, according to Sarah Palin, might look something like this: A sick 17-year-old girl needs a liver transplant. Doctors find an available organ, and they're ready to operate, but the bureaucracy -- or as Palin would put it, the "death panel" -- steps in and says it won't pay for the surgery. Despite protests from the girl's family and her doctors, the heartless hacks hold their ground for a critical 10 days. Eventually, under massive public pressure, they relent -- but the patient dies before the operation can proceed.
It certainly sounds scary enough to make you want to go show up at a town hall meeting and yell about how misguided President Obama's healthcare reform plans are. Except that's not the future of healthcare -- it's the present. Long before anyone started talking about government "death panels" or warning that Obama would have the government ration care, 17-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan, a leukemia patient from Glendale, Calif., died in December 2007, after her parents battled their insurance company, Cigna, over the surgery. Cigna initially refused to pay for it because the company's analysis showed Sarkisyan was already too sick from her leukemia; the liver transplant wouldn't have saved her life.
That kind of utilitarian rationing, of course, is exactly what Palin and other opponents of the healthcare reform proposals pending before Congress say they want to protect the country from. "Such a system is downright evil," Palin wrote, in the same message posted on Facebook where she raised the "death panel" specter. "Health care by definition involves life and death decisions."
Coverage of Palin's remarks, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's defense of them, over the weekend did point out that the idea that the reform plans would encourage government-sponsored euthanasia is one of a handful of deliberate falsehoods being peddled by opponents of the legislation. But the idea that only if reform passes would the government start setting up rationing and interfering with care goes beyond just the bogus euthanasia claim.
Opponents of reform often seem to skip right past any problems with the current system -- but it's rife with them. A study by the American Medical Association found the biggest insurance companies in the country denied between 2 and 5 percent of claims put in by doctors last year (though the AMA noted that not all the denials were improper). There is no national database of insurance claim denials, though, because private insurance companies aren't required to disclose such stats. Meanwhile, a House Energy and Commerce Committee report in June found that just three insurance companies kicked at least 20,000 people off their rolls between 2003 and 2007 for such reasons as typos on their application paperwork, a preexisting condition or a family member's medical history. People who buy insurance under individual policies, about 6 percent of adults, may be especially vulnerable, but the 63 percent of adults covered by employer-provided insurance aren't immune to difficulty...
Salon.com
By Mike Madden
Aug. 11, 2009
The future of healthcare in America, according to Sarah Palin, might look something like this: A sick 17-year-old girl needs a liver transplant. Doctors find an available organ, and they're ready to operate, but the bureaucracy -- or as Palin would put it, the "death panel" -- steps in and says it won't pay for the surgery. Despite protests from the girl's family and her doctors, the heartless hacks hold their ground for a critical 10 days. Eventually, under massive public pressure, they relent -- but the patient dies before the operation can proceed.
It certainly sounds scary enough to make you want to go show up at a town hall meeting and yell about how misguided President Obama's healthcare reform plans are. Except that's not the future of healthcare -- it's the present. Long before anyone started talking about government "death panels" or warning that Obama would have the government ration care, 17-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan, a leukemia patient from Glendale, Calif., died in December 2007, after her parents battled their insurance company, Cigna, over the surgery. Cigna initially refused to pay for it because the company's analysis showed Sarkisyan was already too sick from her leukemia; the liver transplant wouldn't have saved her life.
That kind of utilitarian rationing, of course, is exactly what Palin and other opponents of the healthcare reform proposals pending before Congress say they want to protect the country from. "Such a system is downright evil," Palin wrote, in the same message posted on Facebook where she raised the "death panel" specter. "Health care by definition involves life and death decisions."
Coverage of Palin's remarks, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's defense of them, over the weekend did point out that the idea that the reform plans would encourage government-sponsored euthanasia is one of a handful of deliberate falsehoods being peddled by opponents of the legislation. But the idea that only if reform passes would the government start setting up rationing and interfering with care goes beyond just the bogus euthanasia claim.
Opponents of reform often seem to skip right past any problems with the current system -- but it's rife with them. A study by the American Medical Association found the biggest insurance companies in the country denied between 2 and 5 percent of claims put in by doctors last year (though the AMA noted that not all the denials were improper). There is no national database of insurance claim denials, though, because private insurance companies aren't required to disclose such stats. Meanwhile, a House Energy and Commerce Committee report in June found that just three insurance companies kicked at least 20,000 people off their rolls between 2003 and 2007 for such reasons as typos on their application paperwork, a preexisting condition or a family member's medical history. People who buy insurance under individual policies, about 6 percent of adults, may be especially vulnerable, but the 63 percent of adults covered by employer-provided insurance aren't immune to difficulty...
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