Health insurer tied bonuses to dropping sick policyholders

Health insurer tied bonuses to dropping sick policyholders

By Lisa Girion, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 9, 2007

One of the state's largest health insurers set goals and paid bonuses based in part on how many individual policyholders were dropped and how much money was saved.

Woodland Hills-based Health Net Inc. avoided paying $35.5 million in medical expenses by rescinding about 1,600 policies between 2000 and 2006. During that period, it paid its senior analyst in charge of cancellations more than $20,000 in bonuses based in part on her meeting or exceeding annual targets for revoking policies, documents disclosed Thursday showed.

The revelation that the health plan had cancellation goals and bonuses comes amid a storm of controversy over the industry-wide but long-hidden practice of rescinding coverage after expensive medical treatments have been authorized.

These cancellations have been the recent focus of intense scrutiny by lawmakers, state regulators and consumer advocates. Although these "rescissions" are only a small portion of the companies' overall business, they typically leave sick patients with crushing medical bills and no way to obtain needed treatment.

more...

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-insure9nov09,1,5093427.story?coll=la-headlines-business&ctrack=3&cset=true

health insurance executives."
- - Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

people's healthcare. I understand that occassionally healthcare policies get cancelled for legitimate reasons - non-payment, etc., but how can it be a legitimate "goal" to cancel policies?

Doesn't this blatently put it out there that health insurance is a scam, if the goal of the insurers is to not insure?

Their real "goal" is to sell policies and take in dollars, but NOT to provide coverage. How is this not fraud?

answering it would instantaneously change the entire universe into something even more inexplicable and bizarre.

Insurers are little more than mafia gamblers, taking out your kneecaps when it suits them. From requirements countrywide to insure your car, to turning a good idea (HMOs ie Health MAINTENANCE Organizations) into something pathetic, insurers are pretty much scum of the world.

September 30, 1999-THE PEOPLE VS. HMO'S


This is just one story about how doctors are under pressure to deny patient care because the doctors will lose income if they referred too many patients to costly specialists.

:sarcasm: