Just when you think the health insurance industry just could not do anything more self-destructively stupid, they raise the bar.
From FierceHealthcare comes the news that HealthNet actually paid bonuses to staff based on how many claimant policies they could terminate.
Amazingly, HealthNet is not even denying the allegation, but rather saying it was OK because the staff that got bonuses were not in the claims department, but were underwriters.
Like that matters.
So underwriters were/are getting paid to terminate sick members’ policies, terminations based on members allegedly falsifying information on applications or failing to report past medical conditions.
Why didn’t HealthNet bother to check up front, before issuing the policies? Was it more ‘cost-effective’ to wait to do the research till someone was getting chemo for breast cancer? Perhaps over the short term, but now that one patient is suing the huge health plan for $6 million plus (free reg req), that ‘policy’ doesn’t look quite as inspired.
This is the kind of incredibly short-sighted insurance company policy that drives thinking people to support Dennis Kucinich’s health reform plan.
These folks could lose a chess match to a tomato plant.
