This would come as no surprise to the millions without decent health care in this country, but it is always important when the media is forced to reveal to any extent the swindling and corrupt nature of the US health industry, big Pharma, the private hospitals and of course, the insurance companies.
Wendell Potter, a former chief executive for the insurance group Cigna corp reveals today that the insurance companies "Confuse their customers and dump the sick, all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors." Potter says that insurance companies often drop seriously ill policyholders so they can meet, "Wall Street's relentless profit expectations."
"They look carefully to see if a sick policyholder may have omitted a minor illness, a pre-existing condition, when applying for coverage, and then they use that as justification to cancel the policy, even if the enrollee has never missed a premium payment,"
"All it takes is one illness or accident among employees at a small business to prompt an insurance company to hike the next year's premiums so high that the employer has to cut benefits, shop for another carrier, or stop offering coverage altogether," he said. "Dumping a small number of enrollees can have a big effect on the bottom line."
The US health care system is the worst in the industrialized world, a for profit driven, inadequate health care system. Health care should not be a business. The US taxpayer spends more and gets less for health care than their workers in other industrial countries.
Read more on Potter here: http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Health/story?id=7911195&page=1
1 comment:
The health care industry has contributed mightily to the Democratic Party, which is no different from the Republican Party in this way (and most other ways).
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