The depraved and broken model for delivering healthcare in the United States is based on delaying and denying care and deceit at every level.
There is no way to sugar coat the crap that is going on in the richest country on the planet where we tolerate having 48 million of our fellow citizens go without access to basic healthcare.
Bear in mind, we have a corrupt, for-profit health insurance industry. As you know, the CEOs of some of these predatory companies are even under criminal and IRS investigation.
The insurance industry is largely unregulated, and as we know, the business model is to deny your legitimate claims, because they know the overwhelming majority of us will go away--some of us will even die--which is what they hope will happen.
DELAY, DENY, DECEIVE:
Doctors have reached a deal to settle their class-action lawsuit claiming New Jersey's largest health maintenance organization shortchanged thousands of physicians.
. . .The attorney for the doctors, Eric D. Katz, said that the doctors do not get any money under the deal, but that Horizon will pay lawyers' fees. The doctors had charged that Horizon and three other health insurers routinely shortchanged thousands of physicians through late or improperly reduced payments.
If approved by a state judge, the deal will end Horizon's involvement in a lawsuit filed in 2002 on behalf of at least 40,000 New Jersey doctors.
. . .Also sued were Cigna Healthcare of New Jersey Inc., a part of Cigna Corp., of Philadelphia; United Healthcare of New Jersey Inc., a unit of UnitedHealth Group of Minneapolis; and Oxford Health Plans Inc., of Trumbull, Conn.
http://www.insurancejournal.com/...
DELAY,DENY, DECEIVE: [Note to reader: Notice how this appeared to be the first finding of guilt coming from the ineffectual "regulator"]
State regulators for the first time have ordered a health plan to reinstate the insurance coverage of a patient whose policy was ruled to have been illegally canceled.
In an order posted Wednesday, the Department of Managed Health Care ruled that Kaiser Foundation Health Plan illegally canceled coverage for a Northern California woman in urgent need of medical attention for large kidney stones. The cancellation was illegal, the agency ruled, because there was no evidence the woman intended to deceive the health maintenance organization about her medical history.
The agency's action is the latest salvo in a growing controversy over cancellations of individual health insurance policies that have saddled patients with huge medical bills. With the order against Kaiser, all three of the state's largest health plans are now embroiled in the controversy.
. . .The agency is investigating several complaints of improper cancellations against Kaiser. But, until the latest reinstatement order, the agency had issued no findings against the HMO in a cancellation case.
http://www.latimes.com/...
BIG TIME DECEIVE:
Blue Cross of California wants you to think they're a good, decent and civic-minded organization. They've taken a leaf from the Bush/Rove playbook, and created a happy face program in an effort to divert attention from its criminal activities.
And they shamelessly call it: Healthy California Program. [Note to reader: this is from the Blue Cross press release.]
Blue Cross Launches $40 Million Bond Initiative to Support Small Healthcare Providers in California's Low-Income Urban and Rural Underserved Communities
Blue Cross of California
(BCC) today announced a new bond-financing program to provide qualified
smaller health facilities easier access to capital. The goal is to improve
health care delivery in California's low-income urban and rural underserved
communities.
The program is an innovative new component of the company's Investment
in a Healthy California Program (IHCP), a $200 million fund created as part
of the 2004 merger of BCC parent companies WellPoint and Anthem Inc.
http://www.prnewswire.com/...=
MORE HUGE DECEPTION: [Note to reader, lots of this stuff could actually end up killing you or someone you love.]
Where are the regulators?
Three doctors at the National Institutes of Health have sharply criticized Eli Lilly for its efforts to promote the use of Xigris, an expensive treatment for patients with sepsis, an often deadly blood infection.
In an article published yesterday in The New England Journal of Medicine, the doctors wrote that Lilly -- the nation's sixth-largest drug maker -- had manipulated treatment guidelines for sepsis patients to promote Xigris at the expense of older, cheaper and equally effective treatments.
. . .To promote Xigris, Lilly used "marketing strategies masquerading as evidence-based medicine," they wrote.
The authors of the article are Dr. Peter Q. Eichacker, Dr. Charles Natanson and Dr. Robert L. Danner, who are senior investigators in the critical care medicine department at the N.I.H.
Two recent clinical trials of Xigris have been discontinued because the drug increased the risk of severe bleeding and -- at best -- did not reduce the overall death rate in patients who received it.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
AND ABSOLUTELY HEARTLESS--BUT THEY ARE COMPASSIONATE CONSERVATIVES:
Patricia Meier, a 63-year-old quadriplegic and Medicare recipient, needs to replace the wheelchair she has used for five years. Normally, Meier could simply use her Medicare benefits to replace the power wheelchair, which adjusts her position to prevent sores, with another one from WestMed Rehab Inc., a medical supplier near her home in Box Elder, S.D. But WestMed, along with several other suppliers across the country, says it will no longer provide power wheelchairs to most Medicare recipients after Nov. 15, when cuts in Medicare reimbursements go into effect
http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/...
I have nothing to add. The facts are bleak our collective future is in doubt.