The Washington Post (6/11/12) had a story by headlined “Largest Health Insurer to Keep Key Parts of Law Regardless of Court Ruling.” In the piece, reporter N.C. Aizenman relayed UnitedHealthcare’s announcement that even if the Obama healthcare law is struck down by the Supreme Court, the company “will keep in place several key consumer provisions”:
The company will continue to provide customers preventive healthcare services without co-payments or other out-of-pocket charges, allow parents to keep adult children up to age 26 on their plans, and maintain the more streamlined appeals process required by the law.
UnitedHealthcare would also continue to observe the law’s prohibitions on putting lifetime limits on insurance payouts and rescinding coverage after a member becomes ill, except in cases where a member intentionally lied on an insurance application.
The piece isn’t entirely a press release for the company; Aizenman notes that the law under Supreme Court review “includes several mandates that UnitedHealthcare did not pledge to continue complying with.” But the overall message is clear: The health insurance industry doesn’t need a law to make them do the right thing. How reassuring.
But if you turn to MichaelMoore.com (6/12/12), you find registered nurse and single-payer advocate Donna Smith explaining what that phrase “except in cases where a member intentionally lied on an insurance application” really means, citing the case of small-business owner Nathan Wilkes, whose son Thomas has hemophilia:
Just this week, as now 8-year-old Thomas was facing a health crisis and the Wilkes family was dealing with that crisis, Nathan got a letter from his insurance carrier, UnitedHealthcare. It told him that the insurance giant was auditing the company’s coverage and required additional documentations (tax forms, income statements, etc.) and that unless the documents were provided and found satisfactory, the business’ insurance coverage would be terminated July 1, 2012. While that was awful enough, Nathan then began hearing from the family’s medical providers that UnitedHealthcare went to all Thomas’ healthcare providers and informed those providers that the family’s coverage would be cancelled on July 1.
Imagine that. Your child is hospitalized. Your insurance company doesn’t like that your child is hospitalized and needing care—again. So your insurance company begins to find ways to terminate your coverage for good—like trying to find that one piece of documentation on your application for coverage or your company’s application for coverage that fits their warning as stated in the WP article, “except in cases where a member intentionally lied on an insurance application.”
No, UnitedHealthcare does not want to do the right thing; like other for-profit corporations, they are legally forbidden to try to do the right thing if that would mean smaller profits for their investors. This is perhaps something that is hard to bear in mind when you’re a reporter for an outlet owned by a for-profit corporation yourself.
Doug Latimer
This brings up the question of why someone would “intentionally lie” to get coverage, doesn’t it?
In any just system, your health shouldn’t matter. You get the healthcare you need, as a right.
(See Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which the US is a signatory – for what that’s worth)
In *this* system, you’re forced to lie to get coverage if you have a pre-existing health problem.
Where does the sin really lie?
Glenn
It is good advice to never speak to law enforcement without the presence of your own lawyer. This may also be good advice for dealing with health insurance companies.
When you are being investigated and answering questions to the best of your recollection, it is a strong possibility that the questioner has more knowledge of your own history than you do. Answers to questions that do not reflect the questioners documentation will be classified by them as lies and you will be held as guilty until proven innocent.
In this merciless system the sick are known to be dishonest criminals more suitable for prison than the hospital. Examples of persons committing crimes in order to have access to prison hospitals exist.
padremellyrn
Well it’s no surprise to anyone; all the business’s including the Colleges (The health care for the workers) are doing these audits; we all got the same message, if you have dependents you have to provide proof they are, or still ‘eligible’ . Some folks were rather lax in getting “dependents” off their health plans (not that this is evil since for some folks health care is impossible to get).
But it’s no surprise the Corporations are doing this. Some years ago when it became ‘not profitiable’ to take of seniors that had paid all their life, they used similar tactics, up to and including claiming all their illness (the seniors) were all “preexisting”
gloriana casey
We are now in Bizarro Land! Let’s see possible “LIES” to disqualify a person”
OMG! It says here that you are married…WHAT? You’re divorced ? ——-CANCEL
OMG. You wrote that you weighed 110 pounds..BUT you weigh 115———-CANCEL
OMG. You wrote no children,BUT now you say you’re preggers?________CANCEL
OMG. You wrote that you were employed , BUT now you’re not???———-CANCEL
In BIZARRO Land, a person must never change ONE thing, or they will lose the WHOLE thing. Weird….I guess no one can grow older then?
When no one can afford any health insurance, what? Will the health insurance biz only bring in people who are sick and bet on the death date to create funding?
Will Wall St. come up with Deathrivatives now?
charles cogan
Does anyone get that major corporations should be promoting single-payer systems as it gets them “out of the loop” for what should be a human right?
tishado
I want to become part of a sustained campaign to eliminate the insurance companies. This is pure evil. We can do better. The more authority the insurance companies have beeen given, the worse our healthcare system has become. This needs to end and we need a national right to insurance provided for by the state for anyone who does not want to be a customer of these jackals.
ccrider27
And yet defenders of PPACA will tell you that recision has now been ‘strictly forbidden.’
Amazing to me that anyone can support this law. We need Single Payer now!
Night-Gaunt
This is what happens when corporations and their owners have no accountability. Where they can take your money then cancel you when you need it. The Libertarian outcome we never here from them on.
michael e
I feel your pain but why is the liberal way always to throw up your hands, and say the only way to fix this is to empower the state/Fed to take care of us all, and to pay for it through massive taxation(Of course always to be paid for by the sect that already pays 87% of the taxes)Can you say a one trick Pony?And when I mean” empower”,I mean tread the constitution into the dirt if need be.It is quite literally the only though bouncing about in your heads.And you wonder why so many are against you.The old saying always rears its head.The road to hell is paved with liberal good intentions.
Dick Gozinja
“I mean tread the constitution into the dirt if need be.It is quite literally the only though bouncing about in your heads.”
Quit peddling bullshit.
michael e
Dick I would like to explain myself to you further.But there is no need.Im claiming executive privilege.
Dick Gozinja
Finally…he’s quit peddling bullshit.
michael e
“Ah November.To we who live here, November.The end of one show,the beginning of another”A time for warm fires,tea,and contemplation.And longing for the coming spring”
Love that piece.Soon as I read it….I thought of the coming election