Nets ignore testimony of cancer patient denied coverage by insurer
SUMMARY: Despite poignant testimony by people denied coverage for treatment of serious health problems, the network evening news broadcasts uniformly ignored a June 16 House hearing on the practice by insurance companies of canceling the policies of people who become ill and submit claims for expensive treatments.
According to a Media Matters for America analysis*, the evening news broadcasts on ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS have not covered a June 16 hearing by a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on the practice by insurance companies of investigating the medical histories of people who become ill and submit claims for expensive treatments, on the grounds that those individuals had pre-existing conditions. The hearing featured testimony from Robin Beaton and Jennifer Wittney Horton, former policyholders who stated they had been subject to that practice, as well as testimony from insurance company executives. Noting that Paul Begala highlighted the media's lack of coverage of the hearing and linking to video of Beaton's testimony, national political correspondent Karen Tumulty wrote on Time.com's Swampland blog: "The more I thought about it, the more I realized what a missed opportunity this had been. There's no way I could possibly tell Robin Beaton's story nearly as powerfully as she did herself. So I asked C-SPAN's omnipotent Howard Mortman to dig up the clip out of their video library. Please watch this. It could happen to you or to someone you love."
In a June 16 post to Time.com's Swampland blog, Tumulty reported of the hearing:
In May, 2008, Robin Beaton, a retired registered nurse from Waxahachie, Texas, went to her dermatologist to be treated for acne. He mistakenly wrote down something on her chart that made it appear that she might have a pre-cancerous skin condition.
Not a big deal, right? It shouldn't have been, except that soon after that, she was diagnosed with something far more serious -- invasive and agressive breast cancer. Three days before she was scheduled for a double mastectomy, her insurance company, Blue Cross, called her and told her they were launching an investigation into the last five years of her health records. It turned out that dermatologist's note had been a red flag, and the company was looking for a way to cancel her policy on the grounds that she had been hiding a serious medical condition.
What Robin went through after that was a nightmare, one she tearfully described Tuesday morning in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's oversight and investigations subcommittee. "The sad thing is, Blue Cross gladly took my high premiums, and the first time I filed a claim and was suspected of having cancer, they searched high and low for a reason to cancel me," said Robin, whose hair is just beginning to grow back in from chemotherapy.
The subcommittee took a look today at an immoral -- and illegal -- practice in which some health insurance companies engage. It's called post-claims underwriting, and you should know about it. Because you or someone you love could be a victim if they buy insurance on the individual insurance market. Robin got her mastectomy, but only after her congressman, Joe Barton, leaned on the head of the company. (This is constituent service, in the very best sense of why we elect these guys. But the best thing they could do is to make sure it doesn't happen to anyone's constituent.)
There were other witnesses, too. Like Peggy Raddatz, whose brother Otto Raddatz lost his insurance coverage right before he was scheduled to receive an expensive stem-cell transplant to treat his lymphoma. Why? Because Fortis Insurance Company discovered that his doctor had found gall stones and an aneurysm on a CT scan -- conditions that had nothing to do with his cancer, and that never bothered him, and that he wasn't even aware of. And Jennifer Wittney Horton of Los Angeles, whose coverage was canceled because she had been taking a drug for irregular menstruation. Now, she can't get coverage anywhere else. "Since my recission, I have had to take jobs that I do not want, and put my career goals on hold to ensure that I can find health insurance," she told the subcommittee. "Fortunately, after my husband and I got married, I was able to gain coverage through his company's group health care plan. However, if he ever loses his job, or I don't have employment with a company that offers group health insurance, I might have to go without insurance."
In his June 19 CNN.com commentary piece, Begala wrote of the hearing:
It was as dramatic as congressional testimony gets. Yet it got no airtime on the networks, nor, as far as I can tell, on cable news, although CNN.com did run a story. Time's Tumulty was all over it, as was Lisa Girion of The Lost Angeles Times. But the story did not make The New York Times.
Nor The Washington Post, which found space on the front page the morning after the hearing for a story on the cancellation of Fourth of July fireworks in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, but not a story on the cancellation of health insurance for deathly ill Americans who've paid their premiums.
Stupak, and the Energy and Commerce Committee chairman, Henry Waxman, D-California, did their job. Why didn't the media do its? Why were the outrages uncovered by Stupak and Waxman un-covered by most of the media?
Indeed, according to a Media Matters search** of the Nexis database, The New York Times and The Washington Post have still not reported on the hearing.
* Media Matters searched the Nexis database for ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS transcripts after June 15 using the search terms: health! or insurance or coverage or rescission or post-claims underwriting or hearing or subcommittee or (Margaret pre/2 Raddatz) or (Peg! pre/2 Raddatz) or (Otto pre/2 Raddatz) or (Robin pre/2 Beaton) or (Jen! pre/2 Horton) or (Wittney Horton). Media Matters reviewed all broadcasts not available in Nexis.
** Media Matters searched the Nexis database for The New York Times and The Washington Post after June 15 using the search terms: (Margaret pre/2 Raddatz) or (Peg! pre/2 Raddatz) or (Otto pre/2 Raddatz) or (Robin pre/2 Beaton) or (Jen! pre/2 Horton) or (Wittney Horton).
I've outlined my own health care ideas several times, and there IS a role that the insurance companies can still play, but the government MUST ABSOLUTELY dictate FULL, COMPREHENSIVE coverage, with next to no out of pocket expense for ANYONE, EVER, financed through taxes (taxes that everyone pays, not just the rich now) and only administered buy the private co's, and administered in a way that maximizes coverage, not profit. (Profits would still be ties to cost control, but to coverage as well.) It can be done, but everyone is so freaked out about "big government" that they'd rather die than support reform.
It's really sick.
I know of one group who has no insurance but rely on God's providence
I wish i were a lawyer as government run health care could be as lucrative as social security and workers comp.
But, he was laid off his job a couple of years later, losing his company-supplied health insurance. He soon began noticing signs that suggested that the cancer had returned, and so attempted to purchase private health insurance. He was stunned when he was repeatedly turned down in his efforts, because he has "a pre-existing condition."
Conservatives are fond of pointing out that a person can always get care at a public hospital by going to the emergency room. However, they don't treat cancer in emergency rooms, and my friend quickly and sadly realized that, in America today, if you don't happen to have health insurance (or you don't qualify for coverage), you're just another walking statistic. Your life, as far as our nation is concerned, is completely meaningless. You might as well curl up like a sick cat in an alleyway, and die.
In my friends case, however, he was able to score a short-term job that once again provided him with health insurance. The reoccurrence of his cancer was confirmed, but it was determined through a battery of MRIs and other tests that it had not yet spread. He had a second surgery in which about a third of his tongue was removed, and he is currently doing well. The insurance even pays for the speech therapy that he has needed. He does find it bewildering, however, that his employment status is all that stands between him and the great void. His job makes him a human being, in the eyes of our society.
Michael Moore documented this practice in detail in his movie Sicko, but again, nobody wants to see it.
This is the path that private health care is taking us down to.
How can anyone hear any of these stories, or the thousands of other like them and think there isn't a problem with the system.
As long as someone is profiting by denying coverage, we are a weaker country.
After watching that it made me want to move to France. My question is how can people actually believe that right now, there is only the DOCTOR and the PATIENT? There are hundreds of stories just like these that prove that is not true.
These medical lobbyists in Washington just need to stop. Or the congressman need to stop taking the money
The ratio of the amount of money spent per capita (by the individual/company/government) to the health care provided is obscenely high.
Party of No is not helping by installing straw men by the second either. Their alternative does not make sense.
Only solution is to get the costs down. Then we can look at how that reduced cost is distributed among patients, doctors, insurance companies.
Saying that, I had a friend. He lived in France for a year or so, doing a study abroad whilst he was in college. During that time, he developed a brain tumor. He went through the alleged "horrible" government run health care system, had surgeries, had treatments, and was pronounced cancer free, and still is. His cost, as an American citizen just living in France?
0. He paid, nothing.
We hear these "horror stories" about government run health care in other countries, long lines, waiting periods for surgery, and things like that, and don't get me wrong, I have no question that indeed, this does happen, sometimes. But I think it's the exception, rather than the rule. And, as we've seen here in this country, sometimes even when you have a good insurance policy, you get dropped because your treatments are going to be too expensive and all.
We already HAVE rationing in the US. Unless you have amazing- and amazingly expensive- coverage, you've been a victim already. My health insurance company suddenly decided last winter that it would no longer pay for my usual allergy medicine. Explanation? "I don't use it often enough, so over the counter meds must be ok." Trying to explain that the substance I am allergic to is only present for two months a year, and therefore don't need to take it year round, was a worthless exercise. So guess what? I can expect to take at least a day off from work every winter as I recover from the impact the onset of the allergy, instead of just popping my old prescription drug and staying productive. Insurance Companies do plenty of damage to both people and the economy.
Thanks once again, Media Matters.
Great idea! Pay more than the basic policy offers so the insurer can get more profit! Thanks for sharing...
What a moron.
I'll take a Government pencil-pusher over an Insurance rep whose job depends on denying coverage any day of the week, and twice on Sundays.