Posted on 02/22/2010 2:15:43 PM PST by Nachum
California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner says the insurer failed to pay medical claims on time and misrepresented policies from 2006 to 2009. The firm faces up to $7 million in fines.
California's largest for-profit health insurer violated state law more than 700 times over a three-year period by failing to pay medical claims on time and misrepresenting policies to customers, the state's insurance commissioner said Monday.
Anthem Blue Cross could face fines of up to $7 million stemming from the alleged violations from 2006 to 2009. Commissioner Steve Poizner said that the insurer repeatedly failed to respond to state regulators in a "reasonable time" as they investigated complaints over the last year.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
So California pockets the fine, and Anthem passes them along to the consumer.
CITIZENS GET SCREWED AGAIN!
Under Oabama-care the states wouldn’t have the right to investigate, much less regulate, health insurers. We would have to depend on the oh-so-reliable Federal government to look out for us.
I feel SO much healthier, don’t you?
/sarcasm
700 times over 3 years seems like a fairly low number of cases. I would be curious how many claims were filed in CA during this time?
I wonder how many Medicare/Medicaid cases were processed incorrectly?
JMHO
“misrepresenting policies to customers”
That’s what I’m going to call it after a claim for my stubbed toe is denied even though I never actually read my policy.
And 700 “incidents” over three years with a base of hundreds of thousands of customers does not seem outrageous.
“700 times over 3 years seems like a fairly low number of cases. I would be curious how many claims were filed in CA during this time?”
The article said the number was measured in millions. Pretend it was only 1 million. 700 cases out of 1 million means an error rate of less than 1/10 of 1%. Put a different way, they pay claims on time 99.93% of the time. Do you think any public plan has a record this good? This is what happens when health care gets politicized. Note that these violations occurred over YEARS, yet only now are they coming to light when the insurance commissioner wants to show the public how “tough” he is on insurers.
Now imagine if the feds get involved in overseeing rates. Congress would have a field day with this, giving them repeated opportunities to haul hapless insurance company execs before Congress to explain their “outrageous” behavior. What a joke.
This exemplifies exactly what’s wrong with Obama’s populist-pandering proposal to add rate review to an already horrific health plan. Isn’t it interesting that in over a year of examining this issue, Congress never came up with federal rate review as a good idea, but the instant the “let no crisis go to waste” crowd in the WH took charge, this kind of idiocy was virtually guaranteed.
As ever, I wonder who was financially damaged by Anthem’s actions, and who gets to keep the $7 million.
“As ever, I wonder who was financially damaged by Anthem’s actions, and who gets to keep the $7 million.”
They are being robbed/extorted by the state for the state. I guess someone didn’t pay the right people.
“COMMERCE BETWEEN MASTER AND SLAVE IS DESPOTISM”
—Thomas Jefferson
I believe there are over 800,000 holders of individual Blue Cross policies in California. There are many more people who have group coverage through Blue Cross at work, so a total of only 700 violations is a small drop in the bucket.
That being said, I wonder if they’re up to some monkey business in raising premiums 39% on most individual policyholders in California. I’m one of those people and I’m dreading getting the notice of my rate hike.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.