{"id":810,"date":"2008-02-23T15:33:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-23T19:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=810"},"modified":"2008-02-23T15:33:00","modified_gmt":"2008-02-23T19:33:00","slug":"health-net-ordered-to-pay-9-million-after-canceling-cancer-patients-policy-los-angeles-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=810","title":{"rendered":"Health Net ordered to pay $9 million after canceling cancer patient’s policy – Los Angeles Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Health Net ordered to pay $9 million after canceling cancer patient’s policy – Los Angeles Times<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“Calling Woodland Hills-based Health Net’s actions ‘egregious,’ Judge Sam Cianchetti, a retired Los Angeles County Superior Court judge, ruled that the company broke state laws and acted in bad faith.<\/p>\n

‘Health Net was primarily concerned with and considered its own financial interests and gave little, if any, consideration and concern for the interests of the insured,’ Cianchetti wrote in a 21-page ruling.<\/p>\n

Patsy Bates, a 52-year-old grandmother, was at work at the Gardena hair salon she owns when her lawyer William Shernoff called with the news. Bates said she screamed and thanked the lawyer.<\/p>\n

Then, ‘I thanked God,’ she said. ‘I praised the Lord.’<\/p>\n

Bates called the arbitration judge ‘an angel . . . a real stand-up kind of judge.’<\/p>\n

When Health Net dropped her in January 2004, Bates was stuck with more than $129,000 in medical bills and was forced to stop chemotherapy for several months until she found a charity to pay for it.<\/p>\n

Health Net Chief Executive Jay Gellert ordered an immediate halt to cancellations and told The Times that the company would be changing its coverage applications and retraining its sales force.<\/p>\n

At the arbitration hearing, internal company documents were disclosed showing that Health Net had paid employee bonuses for meeting a cancellation quota and for the amount of money saved.”It’s difficult to imagine a policy more reprehensible than tying bonuses to encourage the rescission of health insurance that keeps the public well and alive,” the judge wrote.”<\/p>\n

Of course, this will get reduced substantially on appeal, but at least this tort case got the attention of the insurer to improve policy (for the time being, anyway).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Health Net ordered to pay $9 million after canceling cancer patient’s policy – Los Angeles Times: “Calling Woodland Hills-based Health Net’s actions ‘egregious,’ Judge Sam Cianchetti, a retired Los Angeles … Continue reading “Health Net ordered to pay $9 million after canceling cancer patient’s policy – Los Angeles Times”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32,23,134,26,127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anecdote-off","category-access-to-treatment","category-greed","category-private-health-insurance","category-unrestrained-capitalism"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}