I'm so disgusted. This company made contractual obligations to people. With the woman in their article they stood to profit $60000 if she had passed away before they were obligated to pay any of her premiums. Now, it's inconvenient that she's lived so long and they want to stop paying their agreement. Never mind that they only paid her 60% of the value of her policy in the first place.
Sometimes, I wonder if humanity has any hope at all.
posted
This reminds of a series I read in the New York times a couple months ago in which the it was found that insurance companies make more money from end stage diabetes than they do from promoting maintenance of the disease. The articles had specific numbers about how surgeries like amputations profit hospitals and patients, while pilot programs on teaching patients to eat healthier lose money. Likewise companies provide only a fraction of the number of testing strips necessary to adequately monitor blood glucose. To do so patients must pay for (expensive) strips on their own, or (more commonly) not monitor the strips. The result of these trends is that many poorer diabetes patients end up with preventable debilitating effects from the disease, because insurance companies will not cover maintenance, and hospitals cannot provide the necessary services.
My feeling as pre-med student interested in these sort of things, and talking with others in the field, is that the current method of treatment in the United States is insupportable. Some new system must be developed that allows doctors to practice in the best interest of their patient without either threat of insurance companies looking for the cheapest way, or patients threatening malpractice suits.
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