My latest—and hopefully last—explanation of my weird trip through the individual insurance market is up over at Spot-on. I’m channeling a certain boring English 19th century author in a A Tale of Two Underwriters.
As ever please come back here to comment if you like.
Categories: Uncategorized
Matt,
You provide a great article on the perils of individual health underwriting. I am glad HealthNet accepted you, but I find it unbelievable and unreasonable that Blue Shield rejected you.
This type of cherry picking applicants is ridiculous. HIPPA must be amended to at least include individual health insurance portability coverage. It would even be better for insurers to be required to accept all individual applicants and make them compete upon the best quality of their plans.
If you or any applicant had thorough Electronic Medical Records, an insurance company might reject your application completely. Otherwise, a health insurer would be very likely to post underwrite you, if you developed any significant medical condition. Then they would be likely to rescind your policy as has been done by Blue Cross of California.
Because of the lack of privacy restrictions and controls, people should oppose EMRs. Medical records should remain private and confidential between a patient and a doctor: they should not be shared among insurers, doctors, providers, pharmaceutical companies, other marketers or any one else. The patient should decide whom may or may not see his confidential medical information. Please see this link about pending Congressional legislation.
http://www.patientprivacyrights.org/site/PageServer