Insurer denied needed medical tests, Senate finds In 10 to 15 percent of cases, crucial heart test was rejected by firm hired to screen requests
MedSolutions claims on its website that it can deliver insurers savings of 25 to 30 percent, stating that it “rewards the clinically accurate providers while protecting patients from unnecessary utilization and associated risks.” But, according to a report from the Delaware Insurance Commission, the company had a financial incentive to deny tests. The report says a provision of MedSolutions’ contract with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Delaware required it to return 10 percent of its administrative fee if the annual costs associated with the services it managed did not fall by 20 percent.
According to Delaware law, it is illegal for an administrator’s fees to be “contingent upon savings effected in the adjustment, settlement and payment of losses covered by the insurer’s obligations.” MedSolutions and Blue Cross Blue Shield say they dropped the provision last year — after the investigation had begun and before any annual cost savings had been calculated.
Keep dreaming of your wonderful government run health care just like many of us will be dreaming about getting the Social Security that was raped and pillaged by our idiot government. Oh I'm sure it would work fine if we just give them a chance ONE MORE TIME!! rofllol
It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers−out of unorthodoxy
While it is true that the government is very inept and wasteful on many fronts, something had to be done about the healthcare industry. I dislike the solution the we ended up with and feel that a much better solution could have been reached if political favor wasn't the prime objective of the damned people writing and blocking the bill. Once again, we lose while large lobby interests win.
What needed to be done was to allow purchase of health insurance across state lines. This would have reduced costs tremendously. At present the insurance companies buy off the state politicians with bribes so that the premiums stay high. Graft and corruption is rife in this industry.
I have half a bottle of whiskey (sorry no champaigne) that we can swig in celebration.
towermonkey, as you know, issues are complex and the answers are not as polar as most want to present them. I very seriously doubt that corporations can be trusted. I also doubt that government can be trusted. Those who would trust industry are just as gullible as those who trust government.
Want to know where the REAL death panels are? Look at the rationing that is going on now in Europe- and you'll see what's going to happen here when we count on the "government is the answer" to everything attitude that LJ and other liberals have toward our health care.
In many European countries - many cancer drugs are only approved for a specific cancer when they are affective in treating many cancer types. This is just one example of the games these governments play with their citizens lives - denying the drugs that work due to a government restriction.
For much of the last fifty years Sweden has had a heavily socialized health care system. Almost all of the funding comes from government revenue, and most aspects of the health care system, such as hospitals, primary care centers and prescription drugs, are controlled by the government. Doctors could still have a private practice, although by the 1960s about 80 percent of doctors worked in government-run hospitals.2
Now- want to see how socialized healthcare works - and how government limits it's citizens access through regulation?
These are the REAL death panels - coming to a doctors office near you soon.....
While Sweden is a first world country, its health care system - at least in regards to access - is closer to the third world. Because the health care system is heavily-funded and operated by the government, the system is plagued with waiting lists for surgery. Those waiting lists increase patients' anxiety, pain and risk of death.
Sweden's health care system offers two lessons for the policymakers of the United States. The first is that a single-payer system is not the answer to the problems faced as Americans. Sweden's system does not hold down costs and results in rationing of care.
I have never understood the argument than the US shouldn't have national healthcare because other nations that do have national healthcare have done it badly. Sad that the greatest nation on earth is viewed as being unable to do something better than Sweden, or the UK, or Canada. Am I the only one who thinks that the US can do anything it puts its minds and creativity to doing? We went to the moon, but we can't develop a better healthcare system?
