Health Insurers Have Cheated Consumers Out of Billions of Dollars

On Tuesday the Senate Commerce Committee released a report showing that health insurers have cheated consumer's out of billions of dollars. Though that amount seems astounding, most of us have experienced the methods used by these giant corporate criminals to extort that money from us. If you have ever had a claim denied on the basis of a clause in your policy that you didn't even know about then you have been a victim of these cold hearted bastards. Have you ever read the fine print in your health insurance policy? Most people who aren't lawyers haven't. According to testimony in the hearing the policies are written to confuse consumers on purpose.

According to the Washington Post article:

"At a committee hearing yesterday, three health-care specialists testified that insurers go to great lengths to avoid responsibility for sick people, use deliberately incomprehensible documents to mislead consumers about their benefits, and sell "junk" policies that do not cover needed care. Rockefeller said he was exploring "why consumers get such a raw deal from their insurance companies."

"...Insurers make paperwork confusing because "they realize that people will just simply give up and not pursue it" if they think they have been shortchanged..."

In New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has discovered that health insurers bilked consumer's out of millions of dollars by underpaying for out-of-network physicians and hospitals. The accomplished this by using rates determined by a database OWNED by United Health Care called Ingenix. The AG asserted in court that this database was routinely "scrubbed" of justifiably higher rates and "low-balled usual and customary rates and shifted costs from insurers to their customers.."

"Cuomo found that insurers under-reimbursed New York consumers by up to 28 percent, the report said. A dozen insurers have reached settlements agreeing to change their practices; UnitedHealth agreed to the largest payment, $50 million, to help a nonprofit organization set up a new database to replace Ingenix."

We desperately need to have a reasoned debate about the reform of health care and I know that everyone involved in delivering health care has contributed to the burden it places financially on everyday Americans. Cuomo's findings just proved what most of us have known for a long time. This hearing was a shot fired across the bow of the ship of the insurer's who have been playing hard ball to undermine real reform of the system they profit by. Many more salvos are to come and the debate seems to swing back and forth. It isn't easy to figure out what will work better than the crazy quilt of a system we now have. Don't be mislead by easy answers because they are the ones that will leave us stuck with a dysfunctional result.