Just read this New York Times story. Or don’t. It’ll make you ill. One of America’s biggest, bluest-chip companies, Aetna, sells health insurance to its fellow Americans, that covers room and board, but does not cover much of anything else. So you’re fine if you check in for a rest, but you are completely screwed if you actually need anything like an operation or medicine. So the people in this story go bankrupt because their worthless policy doesn’t cover the important things.
This product is marketed as a “limited benefit” policy. I haven’t seen an application, but no doubt the unpleasant details are in at least 8 point type and no farther than 10 pages from the front page.
Who do you suppose came up with this little innovation? Must have been an illegal alien, or maybe one of those homosexuals that wants to get married. Or maybe some small town, gun loving, church-goer. These are about the only people who make the news - -except when a celebrity croaks.
Surely the shameless cad wasn’t an upper middle class, polite, properly-dressed, good-school, regular-voter citizen? One of the people who never makes the news because they just have no pizzazz? Matt and Katie are too busy talking to bloggers who specializes in Michael Jackson pharmacology to dig into something this unsexy, un-American, exploitive and evil.
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7 comments:
Precisely. The 2 party system presents the choice between laissez-faire and regulation. The party of regulation hasn't been doing a spot on job of protecting the citizenry from things of this ilk. If it were underwritten by Days Inn, it would have made sense, but who was responsible to oversee it in terms of health coverage?
Thus we have an economy based on debt. Who wrote and passed credit entrapment and usury laws?
I have a land-base Verizon line at home. A couple of months ago I looked at my bill. I was charged a shortfall for not using my long distance time. Isn't government supposed to protect us from such scams?
DB-Another example of why insurance companies are consistently ranked at the bottom of corporate reputation surveys...great to have insurance unless you ever have to make a claim. Travelers canceled my homeowners policy because a tree fell on the roof in a windstorm a month after we moved in.
Travelers provides bonds for my company that are required in a number of states for fundraising. Fair enough, the consumer could be ripped off and the bonds are there to help offset fraud.
Fifteen years ago the bonds were paid for and that was that. Then after 9/11 the insurance company said they needed a letter of credit to protect the bonds.
The bank, for a fee,agreed to provide the letter. Then the bank started to require a pledge of assets outside the companies (mine and my partners) in case they had to pay out on the letter of credit.
So we pay an insurance company, no small amount, to provide bonds. We pay the bank to provide a letter of credit. And we pledged our personal assets to cover any loss the bank my have to pay out if they had to cover the line of credit.
And if we don't pay all of this, we are out of business. So we pay.
The first reaction by any insurance company when faced with a claim is to either deny that your covered and failing that raise rates so that the payout is recovered as soon as possible.
I have been an agressive user of health insurance during the past 8 years and am grateful that we have a good policy (the federal government provides very good plans). I've heard arguements that the "public option" endangers private insurance companies. My response to that is "Promise?"
Does anybody know how much money is paid to private insurance companies for health insurance? I'm serious. I'd like to know. I suspect that the money paid for private health insurance coupled with medicare and medicaid taxes would amount to a staggering number.
One of my favorite charges is being billed for NOT listing your phone number.
Health care can be free , or we can build another fleet of battleships.
Do you think this kind of policy would even be underwritten if the hospitals didn't charge $300 per dose of Tylenol?
you go! Another example of why (much as I used to hate it) we now need some serious regulations--banking, credit cards, student loans, insurance. We had Eden, then we ate a bushel of apples.
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