CA Court Nails Insurance Scam

There is some slight good news on the health care front , which is encouraging after the bad news last week of Nataline Sarkisyan’s unnecessary Murder by Spreadsheet. A California appeals court has ruled that insurers cannot arbitrarily cancel health insurance policies when the covered person gets hurt or ill.

Yes, that does happen, and has been happening often enough over the past decade that the judicial system is now very much involved. The 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana further ruled that insurers cannot cancel policies unless they can demonstrate that the policyholder willfully misrepresented his health on the application, and that the insurer had investigated that application before issuing the policy.

The decision was unanimous, and comes at a time when the practices of health insurers in California are under increasing scrutiny by the state Legislature, the Department of Insurance, and the Department of Managed Health Care. In the past few months state agencies and issued fines, citations and even filed suit against California’s major health insurers for the way they have treated policyholders.

The court’s action came in a case involving an Orange County small business owner whose coverage was cancelled by Blue Shield of California after a disabling car accident. That case now goes back to the lower court for trial, while Blue Shield must pay the appellate court costs. The decision also opens the door to trials in hundreds of similar lawsuits now working their way through the legal system.

This of course doesn’t prevent insurers from using arbitrary cancellation policies in other states, and their fondness for the practice is legendary. In fact, this is one of the biggest contributors to our current national “Health Care Crisis” – and one that simply cannot be fixed by forcing citizens to purchase insurance (as the health care plans of almost all current Republican and Democratic presidential candidates favor). What good is health insurance that gets cancelled as soon as you need it to pay health care bills? And what is the practice of collecting monthly premiums – often more of a family’s income than housing and utilities – for policies subject to arbitrary cancellation, if not theft?

Single Payer health care is the only reasonable option at this point, and America doesn’t have a lot of time to get its act together on that. As Baby Boomers head into retirement – and Medicare, and increased reliance on doctors and drugs – the situation is only going to get worse. The health insurance industry is basically a trading market dealing in futures of human suffering, and that is certainly nothing to be proud of. If we can afford billions of dollars a month to kill people (wars of aggression and occupation), we can afford to provide basic health care to all citizens.

Including the nearly 50 million who now have none, and the estimated 100 million who are underinsured. As many as 95% of the population is a single serious accident or illness away from medical bankruptcy, even if they’ve been paying more than $1200 a month for coverage for years.

Links:

Court curbs insurers’ ability to rescind medical policies

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Filed under Class War, Eugenics, For-Profit Insurance, Health Care, Universal Care | Comment (1)