Health Insurance That Doesn't Cover the Bills Has Flooded the Market Under Trump

[turbinetree]

The administration’s moves to weaken the Affordable Care Act have taken hold, and companies are cashing in.

Early one Friday morning two years ago, David Diaz woke up his wife, Marisia, and told her he didn’t feel right. He asked her to pray with him. Their son called 911, and within minutes, Marisia was tailing an ambulance down the dirt road away from the couple’s house on the outskirts of Phoenix to a hospital in the city. David had had a massive heart attack.

Before being wheeled into surgery, he whispered the PIN for his bank card to Marisia, just in case. But the double-bypass operation was successful, and two weeks later he was discharged.

On her way out, Marisia gave the billing clerk David’s health insurance card. It looked like any other, listing a copay of $30 for doctor visits and $50 for “wellness.” She’d bought the plan a year earlier from a company called Health Insurance Innovations Inc., with the understanding that it would be comprehensive. She hadn’t noticed a phrase near the top of the card, though: “Short-Term Medical Insurance.”

The Diazes’ plan was nothing like the ones consumers have come to expect under the 2010 Affordable Care Act, which bars insurers from capping coverage, canceling it retroactively, or turning away people with preexisting conditions. But the law includes an exemption for short-term plans that serve as a stopgap for people between jobs. The Trump administration, thwarted in its attempts to overturn the ACA, has widened that loophole by stretching the definition of “short-term” from three months to a year, with the option of renewing for as long as three years.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-09-17/under-trump-health-insurance-with-less-coverage-floods-market?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Bait and Switch scam............................

[wasupaloopa]

1. Finding out where the reimbursement will come from

is the first thing hospitals and clinics do.

It doesn’t mean there will be no care if there is no proper insurance.

I was a controller of a medical clinic.

Each year we contracted with insurance companies. Their reimbursement rates were some where above or below Medicare rates.

If an insurance was like the one in the OP we would not contract with them.

The first thing we did when the patient came in for care or made an appointment we checked to see who the payer was.

When a patient presented a card from those companies we told the patient that we did not honor that plan.