Insurance companies abandon sick children and lie about it

[peace frog]

Several health insurance companies have announced that they are ending insurance coverage for children because the new law won't let them turn away the sick ones anymore. That's right - WellPoint, CoventryOne and others are refusing to issue new child-only policies because the companies will no longer be able to deny coverage to children with "pre-existing conditions." They blame their actions on the new health care law, not their own greed. Even for the insurance industry this behavior is surprisingly brazen. They don't like the rules, so they're going to take their ball and go home.

The insurance companies announced their plans to turn away sick kids only days before Sept. 23, when important parts of the health insurance law take effect. These include consumer protections that end the worst of insurance company abuses. The law puts an end to odious practices like dropping people because they got sick, putting annual and lifetime limits on how much coverage you can get from the insurance policy you rightly thought covered everything, and denying children coverage because they're sick.

Once the law is fully implemented, insurance companies will not be able to deny any of us coverage because we have an illness, or drop us when we do, or force us into bankruptcy because of caps on how much of our health care they'll pay for (you can read a summary here). That's why this law really is a BFD, and that's why this latest move by the insurance companies is so over the top.

In explaining its action, and blaming the new law (which apparently they just got around to reading), Anthem cited "uncertainty as to how the rules will be implemented and what the impacts might be on participating insurers." They also whined about "an unlevel competitive environment." Seriously?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ethan-rome/insurance-companies-aband_b_731626.html

[thetonka]

1. When are people going to realize

that insurance is the root of the problem, and as long as we keep defining our Health Care by the for profit insurance we buy(and soon will be force by law to buy) we will all suffer.

There has to be a better way, and that better way has to include giving the authority for medical decisions to DOCTORS, not accountants and not politicians.

[ThomCat]

4. You are right!

The biggest problem with "health care reform" was that Obama GUARANTEED right from the beginning that insurance companies would remain a vital and profitable part of the health care delivery system in the united states.

But there is NO WAY to lower costs or improve health care delivery as long as insurance companies remain.

Insurance companies have to be almost entirely removed, devastated and made peripheral, before costs will go down and care can be improve to anything even remotely resembling what the rest of the industrial world enjoys.

Insurance companies need to become something trivial and extra that rich people spurge and buy for additional services, but not something necessary that everyone is forced by law to give necessary household budget money to every month.

[eleny]

2. Then let a government health insurance policy be created for children in these circumstances

If the companies won't cover them, then we the people could do it. As Wendell Potter just asserted on MSNBC - children will die because of this decision.

And every time the insurance companies implement these shenanigans on a segment of our country, the government can step in until insurance companies knuckle under or go out of business.

F 'em.

[Mimosa]

3. BC/BS have a script they use about the HCR act of 2010, no matter what you call about

Look, it's Obama's and Congress' fault they allowed so many loopholes.