Elderly Couple "Royally Duped" By Health Care Company: Plan Wasn't Insurance At All

Minnesota Star Tribune:

Mary Lloyd's husband was lying in the intensive care unit of an Arizona hospital when she got a good look at their new health insurance card for the first time.

Then she got the shock of her life. The card read: "This is NOT an insurance card."

Read the whole story: Minnesota Star Tribune

Comments

[Helen65]

I truly feel for this couple. It is difficult sometimes for seniors to sift through the sales pitch to determine if something is right for them. One company that I have found that is truly an advocate for seniors is http://www.PlanPrescriber.com. They offer true Medicare and health insurance and if they don’t have a plan that meets your needs, they will find you one elsewhere. We need more companies like PlanPrescriber.com who advocate for seniors.

[KIVPossum]

Sure folks should read the fine print. But honest people are prone to think other people are honest to them.

30 years ago I knew a man who sold term life policies that build up a small amount of cash value. When people asked him if he offered medical coverage he told them they could use the money in the policy to pay their medical bills. Yes, after paying 20$ month for 5 years, they would have 15$ to pay the hospital.

Anytime a salesperson implies a product will do something, that should be part of the contract. Be it purchasing insurance, a home, a car, or anything.

[aspelling]

How a hospital could rank up $63k of charges in a few days?
Why a hospital bed costs $2000 a night? How come an MRI costs $1200? Nobody would pay these ridiculous money should all patients pay them out-of-pocket.
All medical care is overcharged extremely out of proportion as a result of the tensions between insurance companies and medical providers. As a result doctors rip off the patients.

[LHoney]

In Japan a hospital room costs $10 per day...

[x004Ronin]

I feel really bad for the couple, and I support healthcare reform.

However - You must ALWAYS read the fine print. If you read the article, it talks about how she asked a lot of questions and took "meticulous" notes. However, when the insurance agent asked her if she wanted a "better and cheaper plan," she didn't ask questions and just accepted.

It doesn't matter if you ask 100 questions about a plan. If you end up signing up for a different plan, no questions asked, you will get burned. She should have wondered why the new plan was cheaper if it was supposedly "better."

If you're ready to buy a certain car, and a car salesman offered to give you a better car at a cheaper price, would you just say "Yes" without asking any questions? NO!

This kind of mentality is why people got burned by Bernie Madoff. People don't ask questions if you offer them something for almost nothing, whether it's "cheaper and better insurance" or "10% returns every year without fail on your investments."

[quiviran]

You don't have to read the fine print.Just look at the ads on TV. If you are not totally clueless about health care costs and insurance, you should know that any deal you can buy for a small amount of money is a ripoff that you just haven't figured out. The only people with good deals on health insurance are members of large groups that buy the policy as a group. No individually purchased policy can amount to much. It either doesn't cover anything or costs so much only the wealthy could pay the premiums. We need a single national system that includes everyone in the coverage pool.

Everybody needs health care, nobody needs health insurance.

[jelly450]

Read the fine print................If is seems to good to be true it probably is. It states in the article if she had only did an internet search. She would have discovered that the company was bogus before she forked over any money.

[Peter007]

The purpose of the government is to supply a common defense and to provide a justice system. It appears that it is failing to provide a justice system. If the government is too busy with all types of social " feel good" programs, they hope people won't notice that they are not living up their responsibility to provide a justice system. ( besides speed traps on the Interstate ) .
Lat night on 60 minutes they reported that there is 60 billion a year being stolen from Medicare. Thats the cost of the Iraq war.

[VillainUs]

Sorry, but you are mis-informed. The cost of the Iraq war FAR exceeds 60 Billion.

Here is some help:

http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home

http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/11/news/economy/iraq_war_hearing/index.htm

The Pentagon is the NUMBER ONE expense for US taxpayers.

[mjtaylor22]

STOP WITHT YOUR BAD FACTS

[Beamin1]

Insurance is nothing but a scam... a scam that you really can't live without....so what do we do? Too many people are too bigoted, racist or just plain ignorant of reality to support a true single payer system as is needed.... So what does that leave us with?

Honestly I don't know... but I do know that between insurance and banking I have had enough of it...I'm tired of other people making theirs off of my back.

People(middlemen) making money off of someone else's poor health is wrong! wrong! wrong!

Why is this so fundamentally hard to understand???? The VAST majority of people in this country are not shareholders of insurance companies yet we give them more than we give the bankers for our mortgages!!

I don't know what to do, part of me wants to take to the streets and burn some insurance companies to the ground....part of me wants a civil war, none of me wants to continue to be complacent.

I'm not prone to violence or aggression but how long do you let the bully take your lunch money without doing something about it?

Am I the only one that's angry about the whole mess ?

[WindySailor]

This is why fraud should carry a death penalty.

[thepoliticalcat]

This is simply unacceptable. A health insurance company sold them a plan that they claimed would take care of these people's medical expenses, and it turns out not to have been a health insurance plan at all. surely this is the worst sort of fraud. The health ins. cos need to go. They contribute nothing but fraud to the already fraught issue of health care.