Who Needs Death Panels When There's Recission

September 08, 2009

The health insurance industry and its shills have stirred up a lot of panic about health insurance reform by conjuring up "death panels." These claims are patently false and distract from the fact that private insurers are already doing what reform opponents say they want to save us from.

The Washington Post reports today on yet another nefarious health insurance industry practice known as "recission," where they simply dig through your file and try to find anything, regardless how small and irrelevant, to justify dropping you.

Rescission — the technical term for canceling coverage on grounds that the company was misled — is often considered among the most offensive practices in an insurance industry... In the past 18 months, California's five largest insurers paid almost $19 million in fines for marooning policyholders who had fallen ill. That includes a $1 million fine against Health Net, which admitted offering bonuses to employees for finding reasons to cancel policies, according to company documents released in court.

"This is probably the most egregious of examples of health insurers using their power and their resources to deny benefits to people who are most in need of care," said Gerald Kominski, associate director of the Center for Health Policy Research at the University of California at Los Angeles. "It's really a horrendous activity on the part of the insurers."

Insurers defend the practice, claiming that they “need to be able to cancel policies to control fraud.” Real health insurance reform legislation would bar companies from screening for preexisting conditions, thus taking rescission out of the insurance industry's bag of dirty tricks.

Read the full Post report for more.