Wellpoint and Breast Cancer Patients

[arnguy]

An interesting article from Rueters has appeared on the Yahoo News within the past hour regarding Wellpoint and its subsidiaries cancelling policies of women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer by doing thorough investigations and then allegedly producing flimsy excuses to cancel the policies by rescission. I don't know how to link it onto the forum, but you can easily access Yahoo now to look at it.

 

[Crabcake Johnny]

Exclusive: WellPoint routinely targets breast cancer patients | Reuters

 

[arnguy]

Thanks, John.

 

[Dave020]

Ooops, looks like Reuters and all of the subsequent media outlets didn't fact check on this one (one of these women was not even insured by Wellpoint at all!)

Public Press Release from Anthem

Letter to Sebelius from Braley regarding breast cancer rescissions

On Thursday, a Reuters news article accused our parent company of targeting for rescission women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer. While the article was an egregious misstatement of the facts, there have been numerous follow-up media inquiries as well as political statements based upon it.

On Friday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius wrote a letter to Angela Braly, the Chair, President and CEO of our parent company, regarding the assertions.

We wanted you to have these documents in hand so that you could speak knowledgably about the issues involved and share them as needed if you get questions about the story.

We are deeply disappointed that these various allegations would be made without regard for the facts. Our company works to prevent breast cancer, to detect it early and to get our members into treatment. We also work to ensure that all of our members are getting best-practice care for breast cancer.

We are proud of our record in improving care for women with breast cancer in this country and will continue to make it a priority.

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Oh, and Reuters already made the correction to the article (now at a new url) for one of his mistakes.

Corrected: WellPoint routinely targets breast cancer patients | Reuters

 

[somarco]

Just getting ready to post a response, but you beat me to it, Dave.

 

[GreenSky]

Although it wasn't Wellpoint this time, I'm sure they have done and will do the same thing. Also UHC, Coventry, Humana, etc. All insurance companies look for reasons not to pay. That's why the can pay huge commissions to their agents.

I'm sure that this will be corrected once we have a good single payer system that protects the public instead of making the fat cats fatter.

By the way, the insurance company that is likely to shell out $100K for my recently postponed but still planned surgery will try to get out of it also. The fact that it was already pre-authorized is just a ploy.

Rick

 

[Dave020]

Watch out, Rick. It's a trick! They pre-authorized $100 on CPT-4 codes for erectile dysfuntion

Of course, when you are our insurance commissioner, many things will change!

 

[somarco]

Rick must be looking for a transplant to fix his problem . . .