My “favorite” insurance company in the world, BlueCross BlueShield, are massive dicks. Radburn Royer donated a kidney to his daughter, and that’s when the fun began:
Like most other kidney donors, Mr. Royer, a retired teacher in Eveleth, Minn., was carefully screened and is in good health. But Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota rejected his application for coverage last year, as well as his appeals, on the grounds that he has chronic kidney disease, even though many people live with one kidney and his nephrologist testified that his kidney is healthy. Mr. Royer was also unable to purchase life insurance.
Even though he’s not high risk, Royer now must purchase insurance from the state’s high-risk pool, for which he has the pleasure of paying more for getting less.
Health insurance no longer functions as it was intended. It’s supposed to pool risk. You don’t pool risk by putting healthy people in the high risk pool and you don’t pool risk by taking the highest risk peole — elderly and the poor — out of the pool entirely. This is the most messed up thing I’ve ever seen.
If I were queen I’d wave a magic wand and make private, for-profit health insurance illegal because it’s parasitic, exploitive and an obstruction to the common good.
“make …private, for-profit health insurance illegal because it’s parasitic, exploitive and an obstruction to the common good.”- SB.
On the money. (No pun intended of course.)
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And another shameful example: You don’t tell a retired veteran, who desparately needs a new heart that in addition to ALL his insurance…VA Tricare, Social Security and private insurance, that he must come up with $500,000 asap to even get on the “transplant list’…this happened to a dear patriot in Greene County. The hospital: Vanderbilt…the transplant specialist: Dr. Bill Frist.
BTW: Does anyone know if criminals in State Prisons allowed to get on the ‘list’ for transplants…procedures paid for by US and my friend?
Well, Cheney got one……
He’s so rich he probably didn’t need insurance to cover it.
Amazingly, Mitt Romney says he believes insurance companies should be able to deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. That would also include his wife, who has MS. But if you’re as rich as Mitt Romney, you don’t care about that stuff, you can afford whatever cadillac high risk plan is available.
“If I were queen I’d wave a magic wand and make private, for-profit health insurance illegal because it’s parasitic, exploitive and an obstruction to the common good.”
if I were king I would just make being the CEO or any other high ranking officer of an HMO or health insurere a capital offense, punishable by death, or at least a job emptying bedpans in an old age home, for life.
Mittunswillard’s wife’s insurance is prolly paid for by one of the many companies he dismantled over the last twenty or thirty years.
…magic wand my ass. we’re gonna need 155s and a full MLRS battery to dislodge those lifesucking bastards, not to mention ground troops with armored earthmoving equipment and flamethrowers to root ‘em out after the go to ground in their panic rooms…