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Jan 08, 2007 -- Insurers drumming up reasons to drop you

If you’ve ever been sick, health insurance companies have no interest in having you as a customer. You’d think it would be the other way around since insurance is supposed to provide financial protection by pooling money. But health insurers only want to ensure the healthy and, therefore, are looking for ways to boot people with illnesses. Some insurers in California are even going back and reviewing people’s medical histories in an effort to kick them to the curb. For instance, they will review a person’s medical history and compare it to their application for insurance. If someone forgot to list a cold or left something out of the application, that company will claim the person committed fraud and kick them out. Kaiser Permanente is the only insurer in California that isn’t doing this, and the rest of the companies are furious at KP because of it. Clearly, the insurance industry wants to collect premiums but doesn’t want to ensure people. This could lead our country down a path to socialized medicine and that would be terrible for the country. Insurers will have to live with causing that decline unless they change their behavior.
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