Health insurance corruption at the top (AP Photo)
Frustrated Americans have long complained that their insurance companies valued the all-mighty buck over their health care. Today, a retired insurance executive confirmed their suspicions, arguing that the industry that once employed him regularly rips off its policyholders. "[T]hey confuse their customers and dump the sick, all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors," former Cigna senior executive Wendell Potter said during a hearing on health insurance today before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.Potter, who has more than 20 years of experience working in public relations for insurance companies Cigna and Humana, said companies routinely drop seriously ill policyholders so they can meet "Wall Street's relentless profit expectations." "They look carefully to see if a sick policyholder may have omitted a minor illness, a pre-existing condition, when applying for coverage, and then they use that as justification to cancel the policy, even if the enrollee has never missed a premium payment," Potter said.
The [House] subcommittee's chairman, Democrat Bart Stupak of Michigan, called [a] hearing to highlight the obnoxious and unethical practice called rescission. His researchers produced performance reviews of insurance company bureaucrats who were praised and rewarded for kicking people off their coverage. Then Stupak asked three health insurance executives the big question: Will your company pledge to end the practice of rescission except in cases of intentional fraud? All three health insurance executives said no. It was as dramatic as congressional testimony gets.
Yet it got no airtime on the networks, nor, as far as I can tell, on cable news, although CNN.com did run a story. The story did not make The New York Times. Nor The Washington Post, which found space on the front page the morning after the hearing for a story on the cancellation of Fourth of July fireworks in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, but not a story on the cancellation of health insurance for deathly ill Americans who've paid their premiums.
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Comments
Of course the health care industry places profit above people. They have no choice because the law says they have a fiduciary duty to maximize profits to stockholders even when doing so costs lives. That's how capitalism works. We're not some gosh-darned socialist country where people matter more than profits.
I'm a senior citizen and I remember back when we had a medical profession instead of a health care industry, and when doctors made decisions about patient care instead of insurance companies making the decisions.
The obscene profits of the insurance, health care, and pharmaceutical industries are necessary so that they can afford the lobbyists and big campaign donations that will get them favorable legislation against the public interest.
Remember in the Preamble to our Constitution where it said "promote the general welfare"? Turns out that's a pinko commie idea--whatever could our founders have been thinking? LOL
Our lifes are not ruled by the rules of law but by the rules of the insurance companies.
Well now with Obamacare taking over the Health Care Industry I am sure all that think the industry is just a money grabbing self-serving capitalist machine can rest assured! The new bill just signed into law wants 80-85 cents of every dollar earned by the carriers to be put back into the system!
Now how many business that you know of that are required to that kind of re-investment? These companies will simply go out of business leaving you only government run health care...think Medicare and Medicaid! Both bankrupt and horrible to work with.
We have turned into a gimmie-mine-nanny-state of idiots that are going to get exactly what we deserve!
Health care reform is enslavement to the national government...say good bye to your freedom...but we are just to dumb to know what this bill really did to us as a nation!
Get ready to stand in line to see mediocre MD's like they do in other socialist nations...oh and if you are old buy some final expense insurance...you are going to need
What you should do most of all is spread the word that there are better health care choices than ObamaCare, and all would save taxpayers a fortune while delivering legitimate care. I don't know if I can name them here tho...
We need health care. Cigna is an unscrupulous health care insurance that denies many claims to its sick patients, though they've paid religiously and are not defrauding their health care providers.
To think that Cigna is still in business after all these years make me sick to my stomach. My life was virtually destroyed because of Cigna. We were once an extremely healthy young adult. We got hurt on the job and Cigna refused to pay ANY worker's compensation to us, for YEARS.
We've been permanently disabled now for over 22 years and have never been able to go back to our line of work, which was in aviation. we went to a great school too, to get our degree, Embry-Riddle and spent $10,000 to get our aviation license.
This company should not be in business anymore. They're corrupt and fraudent.
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