Cheap but good health insurance?
I am uninsured and need health insurance. I am middle aged and and have some preexisting conditions. My credit isn’t the best due to some fraud I had to deal with and I don’t have much money to spend. Please, does anyone know where I can turn? I live in Texas. Thank you!
Insurance misrepresentation (fraud?) by employer to employee?
How or where can I find answer to questions about possible insurance misrepresentatin or fraud by an employer?
I have discovered that I wasn’t covered by medical insurance when I was supposed to be by my employer. Money was taken out of my check weekly to cover the premiums, I had been insured for over a year with this employer at the time and I didn’t recive any notice of a lapse in coverage. I realised after receiving unpaid bills from my doctor’s offices for annual check-ups, that my employer had let our policy lapse. My employer immediately cut me a check to cover the bills and my insurance premiums were paid. From what I can figure, I was not covered and unaware of it for 2 months. That was over a year ago, and now I think it has happened again. I also think my employer is going to drop our insurance policies altogether and I was wondering how much advanced notice they are required to give?
I live and work in Missouri and am very worried about what my rights to coverage are!
Is health care billing a fraud?
My wife’s HMO just sent us a summary statement of medical care bills and payments for all of 2008.
You tell me — doesn’t this amount to grand fraud?
1. total charges [excluding double billing caused by HMO delaying for months] 33,343.80
2. Allowed by contract [also includes 437.37 that hasn't yet been been ruled as allowed or denied] 8312.78
In other words, the amounts “billed” by the hospitals, lab operations, physicians, clinics, radiologists, etc. were FOUR times the amounts they’d actually agreed to accept as full payment from the HMO.
Now, if you didn’t have an insurance company bargaining for you, the hospitals, et al, would be trying to collect FOUR times as much from you as they really expect to get, and really “should” get.
FOUR FREAKING TIMES AS MUCH !!
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Aside: for everyone who asks in these forums about paying their medical bills — the bill is a fraud. Provider never expected to get anywhere near that much. Don’t pay it. Offer them far less — it’s all they every expected to get anyway.
[The public hospital was the worst -- billing at FIVE times the amount they'd agreed to accept. By comparison, the regular doctor was only billing 1.6 times the allowed amount. Specialists were billing from two to four times the amounts they'd agreed to.]
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Now, if your banker was billing you for FOUR TIMES as much interest as he actually expected to collect, you’d call it fraud, wouldn’t you?
And isn’t it just as much a fraud when the public hospital district bills at FIVE TIMES what it expects to get — and then sues the poorest people [who don't have insurance] for the WHOLE FREAKING AMOUNT?
Ye Gods above — no wonder unexpected medical expense is the leading cause of bankruptcy in America. Most of the bills are frauds from moment one.
do you think that insurance is the closest thing to legalized fraud?
It now costs over $400 per month for the average group medical plan that has a $500 deductible and then only covers 80 percent.
Say you have a major trajedy, your still screwed, you’ll deal with in network, and out of network people, some will pay others differenetly, you could still wind up paying 60% of the bill, that is after all the costly monthly premiums.
i just like how they fight to not have to pay anything on claims.
insurance fraud?
Is it insurance fraud to list someone as your husband on your health insurance when you have been together for 9 yrs and have 3 children together? we just never got married and i do pay for it out of my check bi-weekly…