How Insurers Secretly Blacklist Millions With Common Ailments

McClatchy:

Trying to buy health insurance on your own and have gallstones? You'll automatically be denied coverage. Rheumatoid arthritis? Automatic denial. Severe acne? Probably denied. Do you take metformin, a popular drug for diabetes? Denied. Use the anti-clotting drug Plavix or Seroquel, prescribed for anti-psychotic or sleep problems? Forget about it.

Trying to buy health insurance on your own and have gallstones? You'll automatically be denied coverage. Rheumatoid arthritis? Automatic denial. Severe acne? Probably denied.

Read the whole story: McClatchy

Comments

[Slapmewhenitsover]

07:09 AM on 04/01/2009

I can count the number of times I have been in a hospital (for service) on one hand, and I have always been in good health even with hereditary hypertension.
Even so, I am considered a high risk by insurance companies and am charged exorbitant premiums that are completely unaffordable and clearly meant to dissuade me from purchasing insurance. The same is true for my wife who has NEVER been in the hospital and has an eye condition.
That is why we left the USA and will not go back until we see that the country actually cares for its people's well being.
There are so many better places to live, and I would suggest that if you can get out, do it now before you have a medical catastrophe and lose everything.
No one can argue with this because everyone knows it is true, and it is just going to get worse until they socialize the medical system.
This will not prevent others from obtaining more insurance and premium care if they want it.
However, basic care is a necessity for the economy to stabilize. Otherwise, businesses will not be able to pay enough so people can afford the skyrocketing costs of medical care.

[senorlou]

06:01 AM on 03/31/2009

Health insurance companies are a plague on our society. It is not OK IMO to work for these sick, twisted companies. I know everybody needs a job, but why do we all have to suffer for this? Stripping and prostitution are far less harmful to our society, so is dealing heroin, crack, and meth. Hard drugs aren't a necessity for everyone, they're a choice. Health care should be a fundamental human right. It should not be an investment opportunity, or an opportunity to make money for anyone other than the doctors and nurses involved. How much paperwork do doctors need to fill out for each patient? It's ridiculous. This system should be dismantled right away. Give the health insurance workers a year's salary to find something else to do with their lives. I'll bet they'll be happier in the long run, when they aren't contributing to the problem. Deep down inside, I'll be all of them know what they're doing is terribly wrong.

[Archie1955]

11:12 PM on 03/30/2009

Do you really need any more reason than the contents of this article to prove the necessity of government run single payer insurance?

[AuntWilma]

09:42 PM on 03/30/2009

Insurance companies base their premiums on statistics for the general population, then go cherry picking for clients who will cost them less than the average. It's a form of fraud done in all kinds of insurance, not just medical coverage. They also base their rates on what happened in a very bad year, and laugh all the way to the bank in all the normal years. Clearly, it's time for closer regulation of insurance companies.

[senorlou]

06:02 AM on 03/31/2009

How about dissolving these useless health insurance companies?

[BlackWidowPilot]

08:06 PM on 03/30/2009

As one of the 47 million Americans shut out of healthcare for no other sin than being "...not profitable enough" (quotable quote from a Blue Cross/Blue Shield broker "off the record") due to being self-employed and having degenerative arthritis, IMHO it is well past time to shut down the for-profit insurance and pharmaceutical racketeers once and for all.

G.B. Shaw once observed that "Capitalism has no place in medicine."

The history of healthcare in America has shown beyond a shred of doubt that he was not wrong in that assessment.

Leland R. Erickson

Citizen

[tomasedison]

08:04 PM on 03/30/2009

it's all a game of fool the consumer

[aweissnet]

06:32 PM on 03/30/2009

Is American too big to fail?

Looks like it's not.

[Slapmewhenitsover]

05:41 PM on 03/30/2009

Living in Japan, there is no such activity. All other countries with a FAIR medical system have no problems with this BS either.

There is no problem with a two or three tier system that can cater to everyone.

If the rich want to pay for more insurance, then by all means let them. However, basic care should be available to everyone.

This is going to be hell when doctors have to catch up on all of those untreated patients out there, and there are MILLIONS.

[motodude]

04:37 PM on 03/30/2009

The "Greatest nation" doesn't even have enough simple decent charity to make sure everybody in this richest of nations can have adequate health care. It is shameful and disgraceful. As we've seen the insurance companies are corrupt and entirely based on greed, at a personal and at an organizational level. America will fail and continue sliding from a leadership nation to a has been if we continue to reward the worst people our society has to offer.

[smileatfear]

03:14 PM on 03/30/2009

It's time to start forming health insurance coops. Non-profits where you could buy a share for each person in your family who needs coverage. No salesmen who work on commission, no overpaid CEOs and a board of directors elected by the members.

[ZellaBee]

03:23 PM on 03/30/2009

I've seen such a thing where a group of local doctor's form a group and each member pays in and gets so many visits per year and also gets some testing etc. I don't know the ins and outs of it, but yeah, something like this would be great and may be the solution.

[Grannysue]

03:05 PM on 03/30/2009

Who do you think is fighting universal healthcare for all, the Insurance companies, the Pharmacutical companies and the Republicans, their love childs who make certain they get everything they want.
Unless this WH sticks to their guns we will never see it in our lifetime, and know even the Physicians want it.

[ZellaBee]

03:12 PM on 03/30/2009

Of course, the SOB's will go to any length to stop it.

[FairTalk]

03:01 PM on 03/30/2009

Health insurance is a fraud.

[senorlou]

06:03 AM on 03/31/2009

Amen.

[helonias]

02:08 PM on 03/30/2009

JEsus was denied for a preexisting nail wounds.

[ZellaBee]

03:06 PM on 03/30/2009

Yeah ....and they drove in the nails.

[Prakosh]

12:56 PM on 03/30/2009

Doctors aren't legally required to give care or to do no wrong. Insurance companies are legally required to make a profit for their stockholders. The laws need to be changed as well as the way health care is delived in America. At the very least, health insurance providers should not be legally required to make a profit for their stock holders. In other words, there shouldn't be, within the context of the American business environment, any room whatsoever for a healthcare industry that can only satisfy their legal obligation to their stockholders by denying care and killing people.

[doubtingdavid]

03:45 PM on 03/30/2009

So not to be obtuse, how do you pay for the care? By definition businesses require profits to stay in business. You can't just give away your product forever and not recover costs, witness GM and Chrysler. Private companies are not required by law to make a profit for their stockholders. If they fail to do so they simply go out of business.
Only government can give goods and services away forever for free since it has (or thinks it has) an unlimited bank account, the U.S. Taxpayer.

[TeeLolly]

04:16 PM on 03/30/2009

Insurers do not provide care--only healthcare professionals do that. Doctors' costs could be reined in significantly if malpractice were reformed to make victims whole (free care to correct the problem; just compensation for lost wages, etc., but no huge "pain and suffering" awards for routine injuries that mostly end up in lawyers' pockets; monstrous monetary awards only for irreversible gross negligence, such as amputating the wrong limb--all determined by mediation teams comprised of healthcare providers and patients, with lawsuits as an absolute last resort). Doctors' fees could be capped as they are now in their contracts with insurers--like CEOs, they're entitled to live comfortably, but not to be billionaires.

[lj9283]

06:10 PM on 03/30/2009

You can regulate the profit for "basic care coverage" based on the cost of coverage plus an administrative fee of say 10% (other countries have regulated health insurance companies with only 5% -7% administrative fees and they make a profit).

[senorlou]

06:05 AM on 03/31/2009

There shouldn't be health insurance companies. Greedy investors do not make money off of police and fire emergencies. They shouldn't be allowed to make money off health emergencies. It's inhumane and outrageous that they do. This country needs to change, and right away.

[AnnfromCA]

12:52 PM on 03/30/2009

Frankly, the worst companies deny you AFTER you pay premiums. That's even worse.