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Insurance Industry Abuses - The List |
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Today, Health Care for America Now released a short (well, 40 page) report [pdf] on insurance industry abuses. It’s not new information per se, more of a compendium of insurance industry bad practices over the last few years.
The list of abuses covered in the document is criminal. Here’s the table of contents:
- Insurers Leave Patients with High Out-of-Pocket Costs
- Insurers Deny Coverage for Medically Necessary Care
- Insurers Discriminate Against Women
- Insurers Wrongly Drop People’s Coverage
- Insurers Scam People Through Marketing Abuses
- Insurers Defraud Taxpayers
- Insurers Reward Employees for Denying Coverage
- Insurers Export Dollars Over State Lines to Help Affiliated Companies
- Insurers Reward CEOs for Bad Practices
- Insurers Deny Emergency Care
- Insurers Overcharge Small Businesses
- Insurers Collude With Some Providers to Drive Up Prices
- Insurers Prevent Doctors from Delivering Care They Feel Is Best for Their Patients
- Insurers Delay Reimbursement to Patients and Providers
- Insurers Deny Rural Americans Good Coverage
- Insurers Oppose Steps to Create Health Security
To add to this, just yesterday, the insurance industry admitted under oath in Congress to dropping people’s coverage when they got sick. That practice is illegal, and yet they do it anyway. Watch:
It is insane that Members of Congress, after seeing all this, still defend the insurance industry. They still bellyache that the industry won’t be able to compete with a public health insurance option. And they refuse to give you the choice to drop the criminal insurance industry if you want to.
It’s galling that Congress can be so in the pocket of the insurance industry when faced with these criminal abuses. It’s galling that Congress still trusts them to provide health care to most of America, and is actively working to weaken a public health insurance option with triggers or co-ops. These companies cannot be trusted, period, and we Americans should have the right to choose to get out from under their thumb if we want.
Add in the latest polls and this gets way worse. Yesterday, NBC and the Wall Street Journal found that 76% of Americans support the choice of a public health insurance option. Anyone who is against this is putting profits before people.
That’s what this is about - choice. Do you trust the insurance industry? If not, why are you forced to buy their products and live by their rules? Shouldn’t you be able to vote with your feet and choose something else?
If you think so, email your Members of Congress and ask them where they stand on a public health insurance option and what kind of public option they stand for. It’s crucially important we get these answers.
You stated “Add in the latest polls and this gets way worse. Yesterday, NBC and the Wall Street Journal found that 76% of Americans support the choice of a public health insurance option. Anyone who is against this is putting profits before people.”
I was unable to verify that in the poll you referneced however, I did find in your referenced poll that only 11% of those polls considered health care an overriding issue. Little bit of a problem there- wouldn’t you say? Somebody is distorting something here.