Free Republic

Please suffer me this infrequent vanity post. I want to make readers aware of what looks to me like a hazard and see if anyone else has heard of it or knows how it can be done. We have some smart people on many subjects in these pages. It looks to me like AARP-United Health Care may have some kind of security problem and since Wednesday morning and 5 calls, 2 with supervisors, I have gotten no satisfaction to correct it or protect my account. Maybe someone on here understands what is taking place. I don't unless someone is either...

Although artificial intelligence is in its early stages in the health-care industry, it already has triggered legal action. A class-action lawsuit filed on Tuesday alleges that UnitedHealthcare used an artificial intelligence algorithm to wrongfully deny coverage under Medicare Advantage health policies. The insurer made health-care determinations using its nH Predict algorithm, overrode physician recommendations, and denied elderly patients’ claims for stays in extended-care facilities, according to the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota. The plaintiffs also alleged the technology lets the company “aggressively deny coverage, because they know they will not be held accountable for...

My wife has been wanting us to join AARP for some kind of prescription or medical benefit. I don't want to because....AARP. Is this a good idea financially? Does AMAC have anything comparable? Thanks.

In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade on Friday, the ugly mask worn by the liberals of CNN slipped to show the ugliness underneath as CNN Newsroom host Alisyn Camerota and faux “Republican” commentator and co-host of The View, Ana Navarro made the ghoulish argument that kids in foster care and relatives with cognitive disabilities should show the obvious need for abortion. These disgusting arguments came as the two tag-teamed against Republican strategist Alice Stewart who was defending the pro-life movement. “I can tell you, having worked and advocated in the pro-life community for many...

— Despite impending regulations, surprise billing still happensOne day in March 2020, during the height of the pandemic, Melinda Wenner Moyer's daughter, Jojo, fell off her bike in the driveway and cut her forehead on a rock. After a quick consult with their primary care doctor, who said the 5-year-old needed stitches, and a trip to a nearby urgent care, which didn't think they could do the procedure without scarring, the mother and daughter set out for the emergency department. It was a 40-minute drive away, in Westchester, New York. They went to the Maria Fareri Children's Hospital's emergency room....

Reading aloud a letter addressed to her supervisors about retaliation she faced after reporting sexual misconduct within SEIU, Njoki Woods, a 42-year-old African American single mother of 4, begins to cry. Prior to joining the staff at SEIU United Healthcare West in 2015, Woods had spent a decade organizing her fellow co-workers as a certified nursing assistant and unit secretary at Riverside Community Hospital in Southern California. After leading a successful effort as a rank and file member to organize residual workers at nearby St. Mary’s hospital, Woods was offered a staff job in May of 2015. “I was excited....

Anyone in Indiana have United Healthcare advantage plan? We just moved back here and the plan we had in New Mexico not a guy for here.

Because of market turmoil and decisions by United Healthcare and Aetna to withdraw from Affordable Care Act exchanges in Pennsylvania for 2017, the remaining insurer in the Philadelphia area, Independence Blue Cross, has been granted bigger rate increase — 28 percent — than it requested in the spring, the state Insurance Department said Monday. Insurance Commissioner Teresa Miller said additional companies beyond United and Aetna were considering ending their ACA individual-exchange businesses in Pennsylvania. If that happened, some counties might have been left without any offerings on the exchange, which is where individuals have to buy plans to qualify for...

Tennessee is ground zero for ObamaCare’s nationwide implosion. Late last month the state insurance commissioner, Julie Mix McPeak, approved premium increases of up to 62% in a bid to save the exchange set up under the Affordable Care Act. “I would characterize the exchange market in Tennessee as very near collapse,” she said. Then last week BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee announced it would leave three of the state’s largest exchange markets—Nashville, Memphis and Knoxville. “We have experienced losses approaching $500 million over the course of three years on ACA plans,” the company said, “which is unsustainable.” As a result, more...

UnitedHealthcare, Humana—and now Aetna—are abandoning Obamacare exchanges because they’re unprofitable. Meanwhile, for the first time in 10 years, the U.S. death rate has increased. CDC researcher Andrew Fenelon told the Associated Press: “…it is quite rare to see it [a death rate increase] for the whole population. … Many countries in Europe are witnessing declines in mortality, so the gap between the U.S. and other countries is growing.” For 80 percent of the past decade, President Obama has been president. Obamacare was unconstitutionally rammed through Congress on Christmas Eve of 2009. Isn’t it interesting that in 2016—with Obamacare in full...

More than 92,000 Coloradans will lose their Obamacare health care coverage in 2017 as four leading insurance companies scale back or eliminate their plans while others propose rate hikes of as much as 40 percent. Insurance holders with individual plans through Anthem, UnitedHealthCare, Humana and Rocky Mountain Health Plans will need to find new coverage for the 2017 coverage year, according to a Monday statement from the Colorado Division of Insurance. ... the news came as a devastating blow to the state’s already-shaky insurance market. Colorado is one of 14 states that opted to launch its own Obamacare exchange instead...

Mike Barnicle prefaced his remarks on Obamacare by saying his understanding was "meager." He was grossly . . . overstating his knowledge. The subject in the Morning Joe segment today was UnitedHealthCare's decision to quit the Obamacare exchanges. Dr. Dave Campbell explained that UnitedHealthcare was going to lose $1 billion on Obamacare this year, and that all other insurers were also losing money. That's when Barnicle piped up: "my understanding of it, meager as it is: so it's the profit motive that's going to drive these insurance companies out of the exchanges. They have boards of directors. They can't figure...

Obamacare is killing the heath insurance industry, but help for health insurers is on the way - and it will be coming out the pockets of American taxpayers via higher insurance rates and a federal bailout. When the government says, "Explore other sources of funding" and "working with Congress on the necessary funding," it's time to hide your wallet and get ready to study a few more pages of tax code. As MRCTV reported Thursday, United Healthcare lost $425 million on its policies sold via the Obamacare exchanges, and they might back out of the exchanges all together after 2016....

Until the 19th century, the Chinese practiced a method of torture called lingchi. Better known as “death by a thousand cuts” it involved slicing small pieces of flesh from a victim’s body, one by one, so that death was both protracted and utterly excruciating. This is what the realities of economics are doing to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The authors of health care “reform” believed they could ignore the dismal science. The laws of economics have rewarded this hubris by ruthlessly inflicting fact after agonizing fact on Obamacare. And, like all lingchi victims, it will eventually succumb....

Marco Rubio conceived and pushed a plan that will all but kill ObamaCare -- and he did it years ago. Thank you. United Health Care, the nation’s largest HMO, delivered bad news to shareholders but good news for ObamaCare opponents yesterday. The company announced their earnings would take a big hit since ObamaCare and the associated marketplaces have not delivered the customers and the profits that starry-eyed fabulists had projected years ago. People are not signing up in droves as Barack Obama and all the Democrats and journalists who peddled ObamaCare promised. Expenses are sky-high because among those people who...

National insurance giant UnitedHealthcare plans to cut up to 700 Massachusetts doctors from its physician network for seniors enrolled in its private Medicare plan as a way to control costs, according to company officials. For elderly patients enrolled in the plan, the cuts mean they will have to find a new doctor or eventually switch to a new health plan that covers their current doctor. The move, effective Sept. 1, follows similar cuts made by the insurer to its Medicare Advantage provider networks in 11 other states... There is also pending legislation in Congress to prevent health plans from cutting...

hamden >> Seniors and U.S. Rosa L. DeLauro planned their next move Friday as they looked for ways to keep UnitedHealthcare and federal agencies accountable after the large insurer cut Yale-New Haven Hospital and more than 2,200 doctors around the state from their Connecticut networks. DeLauro, D-3, said she will ask the federal General Accounting Office to investigate the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services on how it determined the remaining practitioners will be enough to serve patients and whether UHC gave the required notice to Greater New Haven clients. The letter has been signed by all five of Connecticut’s...

Remember Presdient Obama promising “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan?” PolitiFact.com has identified 37 instances of Obama or another top administration official making this claim, or something close to it. Today we received this email from United HealthCare informing us that our health plan that we like "will no longer be offered:"

New York’s small-business owners, seniors and doctors are among the big losers as President Obama’s prescription for health-insurance reform takes effect. The National Federation of Independent Businesses, an organization that represents nearly 11,000 entrepreneurs across the state, says it has yet to find a single member whose health-care costs are going down under the ObamaCare program, whose plans took effect New Year’s Day. Meanwhile, an “overwhelming majority” of businesses canvassed by the group has reported increases in their insurance premiums, said Mike Durant, the NFIB’s New York director. Michael Kennedy, who runs two family-owned dog-grooming salons near Albany, said changes...

Let the blame game begin over ObamaCare’s oversights. The nation’s largest health insurer, UnitedHealthcare, claims the Affordable Care Act is responsible for forcing it to boot doctors from its Medicare Advantage program that serves thousands of elderly patients in the New York metro region. CEO Jack Larsen, under fire for separating seniors from their MDs, took out full-page ads to explain that cuts in Medicare spending forced the ­insurer’s hand. “We are working to collaborate with a more focused network of physicians to help us provide higher quality and more affordable health care coverage to meet the needs of our...