FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
And that is why I want socialized medicine. Fuck this for-profit bullshit.
That is so horrible I wouldn’t even know where to begin. Giving the people who run the company cancer would be a nice start though.
Sheesus!
Amazing. Die in a fire, indeed.
But it is expensive to treat breast cancer! How is the insurance company going to make a profit if they have to actually pay out on claims to treat people that have paid their premiums and have a desire to live? You guys really need to look at this from WellPoint’s point of view.
This needs to be flat out illegal. Seriously. Put the onus on the health care companies to find out if someone has applied with incomplete or erroneous data. I think it would be a reasonable law to make it assumed that anyone who had paid twelve months or more of premiums is through probation and adequately investigated and may not be subsequently dropped for anything except failure to pay premiums.
So insurance is okay as long as you’re healthy and just paying them money. Yep, I’m going to agree with kraaze here, this should be illegal. As in locked up, long term.
People and corporations abuse their freedom for profit. Agreed die in fire, but I guess it’s the systems fault too. The question is: Was this an intentional flaw?
And rescissioning…recissining…resizing…canceling their insurance policies to boot. Hello, karmic payback!
This is a good example of the structural problem with using insurance companies to deliver health care. From the Reuters article:
The revelation is especially striking for a company whose CEO and president, Angela Braly, has earned plaudits for how her company improved the medical care and treatment of other policyholders with breast cancer.
I would bet that as Wellpoint gained a rep for doing a good job with breast cancer, they gained more patients who felt that breast cancer was a risk to be concerned about. This is exactly the wrong market incentive for Wellpoint: doing a good job with a specific condition increases the risk of monetary loss for that condition. There was a similiar problem with another carrier and diabetes (I forget which carrier): they did a great job with diabetes, gained a bunch of diabetic policy holders, starting losing tons of money, and then went around sniffing out ways to cancel the diabetics’ policies.
In other words, the market incentives when using insurance to deliver health care are exactly 180 degrees ass-backwards: when a carrier does a good job on treating something, they end up losing money. Although I do feel the practices described are evil, I also think it’s useless to just label the companies evil. This is a structural problem. Without fundamental structural reform, this problem will persist.
I mean, the executives at Wellpoint who instituted this policy should morally be condemned to die in a fire. But they are going to keep doing stuff like this (and ALL insurance executives are going to keep doing stuff like this) as long as the US is using the insurance structure to deliver health care. Insurance is good at pooling and pricing risk, not delivering services. Pooling and pricing risk are why insurance was invented, and it’s ALL that insurance is good for. Period. Using it to deliver services is just a historical anachronism and a result of our fucked up politics.
The good news is, the recent Healthcare Reform Bill is a decent first step on this: outlawing rescission, and requiring community rating (ie no exclusions for pre-existing conditions).
[/xtien Murawski hat ON]
“rescinding” is the word you are looking for.
[/xtien Murawski hat OFF]
I wouldn’t be too broken up to see these people executed in the streets. I’m against the death penalty, so it would have to be in the context of a parade that culminates in them being shot in the head and dropped off something high, to celebrate maybe Labor Day or something. Which one is Labor Day? I always forget.
If I were in a position to do it, I would send the people who wrote the program, who worked with the program, who ordered the program, and who attempted to rescind the policies of the people the computer targeted to prison.
These people honestly make me fear for the world.
I’m with the other posters in agreeing those responsible need to suffer from a fatal case of irony.
But if you kill off the insurance industry and provide health insurance to all you’re basically just like Hitler or Stalin.
Before or after the parade?
I’m pretty sure they outlawed rescission in the health care law. It’s been outlawed in CA for a few months now. Nearly every health care insurance company that was practicing here has been sued anyway by city, county, and state legal offices.
Um, no. He’s looking for rescission:
US health insurance
In the context of US health insurance, rescission refers to cancellation (rescission) of a health insurance contract by the insurer (policy writer), generally following the diagnosis of an expensive-to-treat illness in the patient (policyholder), sometimes by claiming that the patient previously withheld information about a pre-existing medical condition.[3] This usage was popularized during the 2009 US healthcare debate – more colloquially as “cancel coverage when you get sick” – and the practice of health insurance rescission was limited in 2010, following the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
We laugh at the oft-ridiculous people who oppose reform, but this is really really important. We’re talking about the lives and welfare of countless people. We simply can’t let them win. Either we say “oh well, that’s the nature of capitalism I guess” and let these bastards carry on destroying lives for profit, or we say no, fuck you, we won’t have it. Luckily we’ve gone a long way towards the latter recently, but it’s a reminder that the opponents of reform need to be resisted at every step and given no quarter.
Why do you hate freedom?