Ex-insurance exec confesses health insurers dump sick people
Published: June 25, 2009
Updated 5 months ago
A retired health insurance executive — in a shocking but not terribly surprising admission — confessed Wednesday that insurance companies deliberately confuse policyholders and attempt to dump sick patients to plump their profit margins.
“[T]hey confuse their customers and dump the sick, all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors,” former Cigna senior executive Wendell Potter told senators at a hearing on health insurance Wednesday before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
“Potter, who has more than 20 years of experience working in public relations for insurance companies Cigna and Humana, said companies routinely drop seriously ill policyholders so they can meet “Wall Street’s relentless profit expectations,’” Potter told the hearing, according to ABC News.
“They look carefully to see if a sick policyholder may have omitted a minor illness, a pre-existing condition, when applying for coverage, and then they use that as justification to cancel the policy, even if the enrollee has never missed a premium payment,” Potter added. “(D)umping a small number of enrollees can have a big effect on the bottom line.”
More details regarding a Senate report follows in an Associated Press story.
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Single Payer or keep putting up with shits like this guy. When these HMO’s were non-profit, wall street had no drip. Totally disgusting, but were saw it in Michael Moore’s movie.
Someone explain to me why Single Payer National Health Care is bad again?
Because the ruling elite can’t get rich(er) from it.
Congress should set up assisted-suicide programs for the terminally ill and suffering, for the uninsured middle class who choose to die instead of pay their prices.
If they don’t, these greedy medical devils with their ridiculous fees, pharmaceutical costs, and hospices, will wipe the working middle class from the face of the earth - and take every penny of inheritance saved for their descendants. These “caring professionals” will soon reduce the USA to a two-class society.
If animals can be allowed “cost-effective” humane, painless deaths, then so should humans. It seems “humanity” no longer exists among “professionals” when there’s a profit margin and investors.
“and suffering, for the uninsured middle class who choose to die instead of pay their prices.”
Are you saying we should let them die (humanely) instead of help them? Because it seems the more humane thing to do would be treat them and not make them pay the insane prices being extorted today..
Letting people die because it’s “cheaper” smells offensive to me. Of course, I’m a compassionate person, not a money grubbing selfish prick. Not saying you are, but the extortionist sure are, on that I think we’re agreed.
Savanster sometimes life stops before death. This is the corollary to the life after birth conundrum.
The practice of health insurers unloading the sick is well known and has gone on for a long time — way too long. This is one of many reasons why private insurance vampires should have no place in our health care system.
Single payer has been made to work elsewhere, it can be made to work here. If the consciousless den of snakes we call Congress actually worked for and represented us instead of big corporations we would’ve had single payer a long time ago.
Kurt the word is not unloading, it is “dumping.” As in dumping the sick into a cannibal stew or processing them into Soylent Green cookies. No sugar coating please.
This isn’t news. It’s well known the major insurance companies have done this for years. It does underscore the fact that health insurance companies are NOT in the healthcare business, they’re in the DENYING healthcare business. And that, very simply, is why we must have single-payer healthcare in the US (like most of the rest of the enlightened world).
So then, the government health care option would be only for people that get sick, leaving the HMO’s free to insure only healthy people, which is what they want, because then all the money comes in and none of it goes out.
Thank goodness for HMO’s.
My wife and I both have MS. Cigna dropped us. We slipped to a low rung on the ladder. Now the taxpayer takes care of us. Medicare and Medicaid do a much better job but Cigna should have accepted their burden rather than push it on to the people.
John Grisham portrayed a mythical Insurance company, “Great Benefit,” in his novel, “The Rainmaker.” It looks like he wrote fiction because if he said it was a true story, no one would have believed him. Either that, or he is the most prescient author of fiction out there. But he accurately described a health insurance company whose policy it was to avoid paying for its insured, should they become afflicted with a grave illness, and enhance its bottom line. Yup, yup, sounds quite familiar indeed.
You cannot trust for profit company’s with you life or you health. You are a liability to the bottom line. They want healthy people who don’t get sick but pay in and get robbed.
If you petition any corporation for any service or benefit prepare to be turned down. Money flows INTO the corporation not out. “Trust” is a fund set up in the Caymans with your stolen premiums. A ‘healthy person’ is ticking time bomb for an insurance company; better to cancel the policy at the very first sign of illness. Insurance companies look at their clients like so many cattle; they cut you in and sort you and watch you until the end when you are headed for slaughter.
your life, or your health.
I have been dealing with these pricks for 22 years, this is no “shocking admission” when I have to beg some claims schmuck over the phone to admit someone who’s ass needs to be in the hospital stat. They are vampires whose profit motivation is sick people. Their paychecks are blood money as far as I’m concerned.
Thanks for that, Captain Obvious.
We’re already fully aware what a bunch of thieving bastards run the healthcare industry.
After dealing with them for 7 years on a claim denial that robbed me of everything that I have ever worked for, I am of the belief that we should go to Manhattan and grab the first twenty health care CEOs and CFOs that we can get our hands on and hang them from light poles, right in front of the Stock Exchange, leaving their bodies to rot there, the stench being a reminder to the rest of the Corporate Feudalist elite. They have bankrupted our country and bankrupted more Americans than all other reasons combined. They make more than a million dollars a day, for Christs sake! Isn’t it time we take some of our money that they stole back? There has been a class war going on for 1700 years. Only recently has anyone but the ruling class known about it. Wake Up or Die.
Should have known that Wall Street had a hand in trying to squash a government Health Care option….remember when Dick Durbin said of the Senate..Wall Street “owns the place”….no one thought that Wall Street was tangled up with Health Insurance and fighting against any “reform or regulations”..but if you stop and think AIG (or what ever they are calling themselves now) who is trying to desperately pay back their bail-out money, to free themselves of ANY government regulation and get back to business as usual…..you can figure out why your health care premiums are sky-rocketing…why legitimate insurance claims are being denied and why people policies are being “canceled” when they become ill….same as the Banks and their credit cards massacre..squeezing more money from consumers to pay off the taxpayer bail-out and get back to the business as usual…causing another U.S./World financial/economical collapse..and the GOP half the Democrats and President Obama (his advisor’s) can’t/won’t do a thing to stop them..in fact enabling them…but they are afraid of us….(they get scared and call the cops with the guns, clubs, tazers and the LAW, to protect them from tresspassers………..) the government can’t do that..Senators can’t do that..only the private for-profit corporations can get police protection from us..and thats why government is “BAD and incompetent”…while private enterprise is always on the “right” side of the law
One P.E.T. test is $1500.00, while another is $6500.00. The more expensive is the less accurate but doc sends the patient to the machine he and his buddies co-own. It seems the insurance industry does little to drive down costs, is amass with corruption and scams. The AMA does little to protect the public from malpractice, and Republicans have created a system where lawsuits are not allowed to properly correct mistakes. What we have now is not a medical system, it’s a medical mafia.
http://www.fbi.gov/page2/june09/healthcare_062409.html
Savanster, it’s not an option in most states, and it should be for the terminal, hopelessly ill and suffering who cannot afford to prolong the agony at an expensive hospice, and wish instead to leave the money to their descendants or family. The system is set up in some cases, to gobble up a lifetime of assets from the uninsured working middle class (who BUILT this country) in exchange for a few more months of pain and suffering.
A prize horse is worth more than the life of a child and most Americans in this country, and that’s what “the system” has become.
Damn, where can you get a PET scan for $1500? The behind the scenes corruption in the profession has not gone away. Cross referrals like you mention were supposed to have been disallowed by the Stark laws as was BigPharma bribing of physicians with trips and tickets but it still goes on. Drug money fuels the scams right down to hiring fine looking drug reps to tease docs into prescribing the latest most expensive Rx which may not be any better than the 20 year old generic. Bottom line, Corp/Medecine/Insurance has grown so big it is a liability. Pigs get fat but Hogs get slaughtered.
I was confused by the wording in your first post.. that’s why the question.
But I agree with you that we should have 100% legal assisted suicide for patients with no hope; forcing humans to endure such misery is wrong on many levels, the “dollar cost” not being the most prudent but certainly substantial.
I agree marthamitchell2. And we already live under socialism. Our health care system is for-profit socialism at it’s worst. Insurance companies decide what “in network” doctors I can see. If I go to ER I have to wait a half hour while they contact my insurance company. Then I have to ask how much is covered 80%, 60%? I still get a big bill months later because some expensive test they decided was “optional”.
I am not my doctor’s customer, the insurance company is the doctor’s customer. The doctor must abide by agreements and contracts signed for the insurance company. The patient is in third place.
Don’t worry about socialism: many people in socialist countries live long, comfortable lives. I would worry about the Republican corporate alternative, though, cannibalism.
OK now the question is, How do we get the senate to grow a backbone? Last I heard the Dems were caving.
They are corporate invertebrates, Angela. If Washington was suddenly buried in 30 feet of mud, no vertebrate fossils would ever be found. Furthermore there are no reliable natural predators in the downtown area. They feed instead on the suburban poor because of their greater nutritional value.
The only way is to ask them to stop selling their souls for reelection campaign money, and make their decisions based on the health, welfare of the American People. As it is, the ABORTION called “Education” teaches Democracy and in my state if you don’t send your children to school to learn “Democracy” then you will be sent to jail. Funny, the education in this country is probably rated among the lowest in quality in industrialized countries: (another stat to research?)
If you’d like we can discuss how politics affects education standards at another time!
The truth is Congress is quite comfortable with their family healthcare coverage, salaries, cronyism, nepotism, dynasties, power, and the fact that the American public is too uneducated, disinterested, and/or preoccupied to believe they can make things change.
The scoundrels never were voted out. They became more entrenched like any well-organized network will do.
They are reelected because they have no souls and their health care keeps them preserved in hermetically sealed jars. It is a collection of zombies not unlike Ahmadinejad’s bosses.
Wall Street has sold out Main Street.
CIGNA dropped me after Intel laid me off because I reached the magical 50-something age. They work hand-in-hand to lay off and not insure older workers, who cost companies like Intel lots more money than their so-called “interns”, like the “intern” who replaced me, an “exceeds expectations” worker.
The fix is in with both the healthcare insurance corporations and big corporations like Intel. Legal discrimination based on disease; legal discrimination based on age.
I look forward to the death of CIGNA, quite literally, when we get a public option. I want to make them suffer, just like they made so many others suffer.
Another healthcare company jacked up rates $20/month for “customers” and raised the CEO’s salary $5 million/year.
Remember when customers were respected, honored, and voters were considered boss? Now you can be arrested for verbally insulting the zoning board secretary if you voice your opinion he/she is incompetent. (They’ve forgotten the fact you’re paying their salary and their healthcare although you might not afford it for yourself!)
We shouldn’t be dropping bombs on other countries if we can’t protect the rights, dignity and health of our own people.
I guess Pakistan needs more money. Why don’t they borrow it from China like the rest of us.
Martha, in socialist countries the bureaucrats are required by law to respect their clients. If they don’t they are deported to America.
And we already borrowed all of China’s money. There is nothing left for Pakistan to borrow. The reason we drop bombs on other countries is because we have bartered away our rights, dignity and health (and wealth) for shiny objects. We are slaves to our machines.
Why aren’t these company CEO’s in prison ??? … clearly their actions caused death to many people. They should be held accountable.
At least their companies should be given the death sentence and put out of business for good. They were involved in criminal actions that amounted to fraud and murder.
We found out they were doing this in the Clinton years and supposedly we went after the offenders. But of course in the criminal Bush years they just opened the flood gates on stealing and raping the system.
I hate Bush / Cheney and the filthy Republicans.
Prison space is at a premium these days because of convicted pot smokers. Prison is therefore too good for these CEO wretches; better to keep them working, maybe they’ll get it right. Their companies did get a death sentence - bankruptcy. Fraud and murder are actually approved Republican methods; look for a death squad in your neighborhood soon.
Companies fire people with heart attacks etc. too
The way it is, corporations are “in bed” with certain insurance suppliers, investment companies, and change should be considered. Corporations have power, but should they have interest in employees healthcare, life insurance and life savings?
Why not allow workers free choice in those personal and family decisions?
It would change the course of employment tied in particularly with executive salary but folks would build lifelong assets and seek personal life/health insurance OUTSIDE the employing company. Workers might no longer find themselves riding out life, feeling tied-in and slaved over a 30 year retirement barrel.
Corporations might be able to offer package plans at better rates but is it really fair? Is it fair for Healthsouth to give an autoworker a better rate just because he’s working in a group with an auto company, and not purchasing insurance freely and individually?
Why all the packages?
And is it right to allow huge corporate conglomerates to meld together and control the assets, health, and life savings for an entire family?
“Why aren’t these CEO’s in prison?” Ask former senator Bill Frist of HCA. Ask why Health South continues to live and grow as a company while Scrushy is in prison.
Ask why the Bush era made malpractice suits difficult for victims and lowered the quality of healthcare (and American life) by eliminating that balance.
Ask your senators and congressmen why they listen to corporate-sent lobbyists instead of using their own brains. If these “public servants” opted to serve the American People instead of entertaining the next corporate campaign contributor, lobbyists would be out of work and American life would begin to change.
When lawmakers make humane decisions considering the quality of health and welfare of the American People and not to pacify corporate profiteering interests, then a powerful 1% of the population will no longer be controlling the outcome of events.
It’s time, but I don’t think it will happen because the system is not conscience-driven.
It’s profit-driven.
The changes that you suggest are absolute anathema to the established order. The last thing they want is for people to think and act in their own best interests. In the US corporations know what is best for you. You should know this from the daily lessons given on Fox News. Martha , you are just going to have to sit closer to your television, you are thinking and asking questions outside of the petri dish.
Thou shalt not covet thy corporation’s profits.
(I don’t know now where I found these numbers, but had them in a file. The current numbers are probably online somewhere.)
David B Snow Jr CEO Medco Health, $21.76 million, 5-Year Compensation Total $36.29 million.
Dale B Wolf CEO Coventry Health Care, $20.86 million, 5-Year Compensation Total $61.91 million.
Michael B McCallister CEO Humana, $20.06 million, 5-Year Compensation Total $60.64 million.
Ronald A Williams CEO Aetna $8.88 million.
Trevor Fetter CEO Tenet Healthcare $5.80 million, 5-Year Compensation Total $19.08 million.
Stephen J Hemsley CEO UnitedHealth $4.00 million.
John H Hammergren CEO McKesson $44.91 million, 5-Year Compensation Total $94.59 million.
Miles D White CEO Abbott Laboratories $44.76 million, 5-Year Compensation Total $76.47 million.
William C Weldon CEO Johnson & Johnson $15.41 million, 5-Year Compensation Total $49.15 million.
Jeffrey B Kindler CEO Pfizer $5.76 million.
John C Lechleiter CEO Eli Lilly & Co $5.13 million.
James M Cornelius CEO Bristol-Myers Squibb $5.06 million.
Do these figures reflect health care benefits?
Insurance companies can now tell the truth because they paid the right Law Makers to make sure President Obama’s plan to help citizens doesn’t pass. Now Law Makers have good insurance paid by the taxpayers and that’s all that counts. Republicans could care less about what Americans did. Now Bush did his best to reduce the US population by allowing thousands to die during Katrina and Gov. Terminator is cutting health care for the poor, seniors and children. Look Republicans know Americans allowed Bush/Cheney to get two terms in the White House and they fooled the public for 8 years why stop now. When Republicans picked Rush Limbaugh as their Leader we hit rock bottom, and as no one complained anything goes.
Murder and mayhem has become the norm. This is raw conservatism at work for you.