It's Good Business for a Few

I have talked here before about the trouble with American health care and how for profit companies have an incentive to deny you the health care coverage you have paid for. Not only do they deny you the health care you have paid for and deserve in search of the not so mighty dollar but they apparently have another gig which is also extremely or even obscenely profitable. This gig is where they invest $150K to get a $12 million return. That kind of ROI can assuage a lot of guilt if you know what I mean. It's a really good deal and I imagine a of fairly stand up people might have trouble turning their back on it. I guess it is really no wonder insurance companies keep doing it:

Blue Cross was fined $150,000 by the California Department of Managed Healthcare to penalize it for 12 Million dollars in premium overcharging errors.

Assurant Health — was just fined $3 million by the state of Connecticut for illegally denying care to hundreds of patients.

Health Net is being sued for $6 Million by a patient whose coverage was dropped in the middle of her cancer treatment, and Health Net gives bonuses for dropped policies! According to the article, the company called 2003 “a banner year” , for saving the company $6 million in what they call “unnecessary health care expenses.”

A California Appellate Court rules against insurer’s recission practices, and allows a family to sue Blue Shield for dropping their coverage after it had previously approved coverage for medical treatment.

How many of these stories have to go around before we do the right thing as a country and institute a single payer universal health care system. You know, like the ones the rest of the leading countries in the world have.

h/t Susie