Health care: Stay healthy. Or you may loose you health care insurance

Opponents of the health care reform often claim that 83 percent of Americans are satisfied with their health care. The numbers are probably correct - most of the people are generally healthy. But what about the other 17 percent?

There is no secret that private health care insurance companies, like any private enterprise, are about making a profit. The obvious way for these companies to make their profits is to maximize membership fees and minimize payments to the facilities that actually provide health care related services. In this quest for higher profits the companies use all kinds of techniques. One was revealed during House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee Hearing on “Terminations of Individual Health Policies by Insurance Companies.”

It turns out that once an insured person is diagnosed with a sever health problem, these insurance companies go into high gear trying to rescind this person's policy. One way of doing it is that they look at this person's prior medical history and try to prove an existence of preexisting medical condition. Then they argue the person knew about it, yet did not disclose it, and that, they claim, is fraud.

Full accounts of the meeting is here and here.

One witness testified that her insurance was rescinded after she diagnosed with cancer because few years back her dermatologist briefly mentioned the word after the examination.

CNN ran a segment on this patient's struggle against her insurance company.

After other witnesses testified to similar treatment by their insurance carriers, the insurance companies execs were asked if they would terminate this practice. This was their response:

So, even if you have insurance, make sure you don't get sick - you may loose it...