Insurer targeted HIV patients to drop coverage

[piratefish08]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100317/hl_nm/us_insurers

Shitbags like these should be locked up.

Instead, we'll probably just give them more money.............


Insurer targeted HIV patients to drop coverage

By Murray Waas – Wed Mar 17, 10:17 am ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – In May, 2002, Jerome Mitchell, a 17-year old college freshman from rural South Carolina, learned he had contracted HIV. The news, of course, was devastating, but Mitchell believed that he had one thing going for him: On his own initiative, in anticipation of his first year in college, he had purchased his own health insurance.

Shortly after his diagnosis, however, his insurance company, Fortis, revoked his policy. Mitchell was told that without further treatment his HIV would become full-blown AIDS within a year or two and he would most likely die within two years after that.

(snip)

[Oceansaway]

1. WTF !!...grrrrrrrrrrr...n/t

[Warpy]

2. The insurance company death spiral was most obvious for HIV patients

once treatments had been developed that would extend their lives. The problem is usually that everybody who purchases insurance is thrown into an artificial "group plan" with everybody else who buys at the same time. As people within that "group plan" get sick and require care, the premiums go up. Healthy people can drop out and get another plan, effectively joining a healthy group and lowering their premiums. The sick are stuck, unable to get another plan and trapped by rising premiums as the people left in the artificial "group" get sicker. Eventually, the sick have to drop their insurance to be able to afford to eat and that solves the insurance company's problem.

The whole idea of the actuarial table driven "group plan" is part of what's wrong with the system, limiting the spread of risk to small groups at any one time and making those groups vulnerable to abuse as people get sick and need care.

Canceling policies just because people get sick is new, though. I suppose we'll see more of that until they are forced to stop.