Health Care: What Care?

These rotten bastards are looking for ways to cut care, not to provide it.

The Los Angeles Times tells us that Blue Cross of California, the state's largest for-profit health insurer, actually has the unmitigated gall to ask doctors to help them cut insured patients from the insurer's rolls.

"Any condition not listed on the application that is discovered to be pre-existing should be reported to Blue Cross immediately," the letters say. The Times obtained a copy of a letter that was aimed at physicians in large medical groups.

What next?The article goes on to say:

WellPoint Inc., the Indianapolis-based company that operates Blue Cross of California, said Monday that it was sending out the letters in an effort to hold down costs.

"Enrolling an applicant who did not disclose their true condition (and the condition is chronic or acute), will quickly drive increased utilization of services, which drives up costs for all members," WellPoint spokeswoman Shannon Troughton said in an e-mail.

[...]

Blue Cross is one of several California insurers that have come under fire for issuing policies without checking applications and then canceling coverage after individuals incur major medical costs. The practice of canceling coverage, known in the industry as rescission, is under scrutiny by state regulators, lawmakers and the courts.

Pretty fucking cheeky of them, we should think.

It's time to clean house, people. We need to send these people packing. Year after year, their CEOs receive millions in bonuses to inflate their already luxurious salaries, they hire doctors to assess every claim they receive in the hope of denying yet another suffering patient the health care that they, or their employers, have been paying for for years, they let us die rather than disgorge a tenth of a per cent of their profits, and now they want our doctors - not their own paid hacks - to help them kick the rest of us off the rolls.

Let them hear from you. Our legislators and regulators and courts won't do squat to protect us. Remember that until ordinary people marched to demonstrate against the denial of paid-for care to Nataline Sarkisyan, the insurers were perfectly willing to sit back and watch a teenager die in the name of their obscene profits. Only when people started marching and protesting and calling them till their phones rang off the hook did they even think of relenting. And of course, they timed their decision to come too late to save the girl's life.

These vultures and vampires have sucked our blood for too damned long. The L.A. Times has the details here. You can reach Steve Poizner, the insurance commissioner, here. Contact Lynne Randolph of the state Department of Health Care here. Contact Shannon Troughton, spokesweasel for WellPoint (the nation's largest healthcare provider) here:

Media Shannon Troughton, 404-842-8457 WellPoint, Inc.

shannon.troughton@wellpoint.com

You can contact Blue Cross right here.

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