Insurance Company Drops Cancer Patient And Veteran Because He Accidentally Underpaid By Two Cents

[Emit]

One of the worst abuses of the private health insurance industry is the practice of denying claims to pay for necessary care or revoking the coverage of policyholders for frivolous reasons. A Vietnam veteran from Thornton, Colorado, is the latest victim of this practice.

Vietnam vet Ronald Flanagan has been battling cancer for more than two years. Two weeks ago, Flanagan was getting prepped for a bone biopsy at the local Exempla Rock Creek Medical Center. But at the last minute, his wife called the hospital and told them to stop the procedure because she had just received notice that they no longer have insurance. The reason why? The couple had accidentally underpaid their insurer by two pennies and it decided to drop them from their plan...

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Local station ABC 7 interviewed the Flanagans about their plight. “I felt that it was all my fault,” said Mrs. Flanagan, who made the accounting error, choking back tears. Watch it (video at link)

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The recently passed health care law — which congressional Republicans are unanimously trying to repeal — includes a whole host of protections that would rein in the ability for health insurers to drop patients for frivolous reasons like this...

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http://thinkprogress.org/2011/01/26/insurance-company-veteran-cents/

[Mnemosyne]

1. Repubes - the party of loopholes. n/t

[Emit]

2. Apparently, his wife "swapped a 7 for a 9, leaving their $328.69 payment 2 cents short'

This is just so wrong

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/01/27/report-vietnam-veteran-dropped-over-two-cent-shortage-by-insurance-co-vet-suffers-from-ailment-caused-by-agent-orange/

[pitohui]

3. this can't be legal

i know someone who underpaid his bill by a penny or two in the early 1980s and he threatened a lawsuit until the company realized that, yeah, they could just overlook the thing about the penny

you can't steal a surgery worth tens of thousands of dollars from a cancer patient over two cents, some insurance executive needs to actually go to jail or at least lose his house over this

this is a pretty bold attempted murder for money (profit) by the insurer

we don't need NEW laws, we need the person who authorized this to go to jail under the laws we have NOW, because we do have them

what if the cancer patient wasn't a veteran? w hat if he was a poor black unemployed guy? w ould it then be perfectly OK to steal from him? what if he was a drug addict? would it then be OK to steal from him because he wasn't sympathetic

this is wrong, whether it's done to a veteran or the lowest scumbag of a hobo among us...it's theft of a person's health and life by denying him the care we have the known technology to provide...extortion for money, pure and simple