a few campaign contributions here and there and you end up with clauses like, "the insured must disclose every single medical condition they've ever had at the time of application or else this policy can be voided."
To be honest, in 20 years of dealing with insurance claims, I've never encountered a problem such as this. We see "Service Not Covered" all the time, but that's just a matter of which policy a patient has. State Boards of Insurance generally have responsibility for dealing these kinds of issues; I just don't see any indication it is a major problem.
of course, nobody can do that, so when the brain cancer hits... "ooops, you didn't tell us about that yeast infection - go pound sand."
Yeah, that really wouldn't ever happen. Now, if you had previously had a benign lesion in the brain and didn't disclose it, that would be different. But an insurance company is not going to be able to get by with denying your brain cancer claims because you didn't disclose a yeast infection. The State Board would deal with it, and if they didn't, there are 1,000 attorneys in any town who will deal with it.
I read a John Grisham book about it one time ;) But in real life, I'm not sure this plays out with any frequency.
the *only* thing that saves most folks is they work for big companies and the insurance companies are scared of forking the big company. if you are on your own, though, you are SOL.
I've been self employed for 30 years, have always purchased my own insurance, and have never had any problem with it. There was one instance where we hadn't read our policy and thus didn't understand its terms, and ended up costing ourselves $500. But if you deal with a reputable company (as with any other insurance) the chance of a problem is pretty minimal. |
