Rescission Committees are becoming the evil villain
Imagine you were diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer and your insurance coverage is cancelled because you failed to disclose that you visited a dermatologist for acne. Or consider your loved one dying of lymphoma and their policy getting revoked for failure to report a possible aneurysm and gallstone that their physician did not discuss with them, but had noted in their chart. Stories like this are happening all over the United States as a result of rescission committees.
Rescission is the technical term for canceling coverage on grounds that the company was misled. Many insurance committees are using rescission committees to rid themselves of clients that could cost them or have severe conditions. Insurance companies have reported that these committees help control fraud, which they estimated reaches $100,000 billion annually.
Investigations regarding rescission showed that health insurers WellPoint Inc., UnitedHealth Group and Assurant Inc. cancelled policy coverage for over 20,000 individuals saving them more than $300 million in medical claims over a five year period. Employees were even praised in their performance reviews for terminating policyholders with expensive ailments. The insurance companies don’t seem to blink an eye about their heartless cuts. Spokeswoman for Anthem Blue Cross stated, “We do not rescind policyholder’s coverage because someone on the policy gets sick. We have put in place a thorough process with multiple steps to ensure that we are as fair and as accurate as we can be in making these difficult decisions.”
A pending case involves Blue Shield who refused services to a husband and wife where the wife had filed a claim for emergency gallbladder surgery. After turning in her husband’s questionnaire, the committee found that the husband had high cholesterol and ended up dropping them both. The Blue Shield officials would make no comment regarding the matter.
The mistakes that people are making are honest mistakes and omissions. They certainly don’t deserve to be dropped for what the insurance companies are calling fraud. With the federal health-care pre-screening, this may not be an issue in the future, but for now it is a serious misconduct for companies to be treating individuals this way.