Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Hidden Dangers of Inadequate Health Insurance, Pt.1 – How you find out.

More and reports keep coming in concerning the woes of those of inadequate health insurance. Karen Davis, president of the Commonwealth Fund concludes that “The underinsured look a lot like the uninsured.” But it can be even worse than that. In many cases, those with inadequate health insurance are worse off than people with no health insurance. There is one report where a victim had a bad car wreck. The person had lost his COBRA due to confusion when his former place of employment was acquired by a larger company on the very day his new COBRA plan was to take effect. In the confusion that ensued, that person was dropped by the old COBRA administrators and not picked up by the new ones for the three-month, alleged retroactive waiting period.

The bad car wreck occurred during that retroactive window, which resulted in having no health insurance to cover this catastrophe. As that person was being whisked away in an ambulance and still in deep trauma, he still had enough cognizance to plead he be taken only to a VA facility, because of having no health insurance. The response from the ambulance crew was that the nearest VA facility was not equipped with a trauma center. “Don’t worry,” they replied. “We have ways of collecting money from the VA.” So on they proceeded to the nearest trauma center. After 2 hours of being lifted by a broken collarbone and two broken ribs onto the counter-top CAT scan ‘beds’ for an abundance of scans from head-to-toe. Then he was lifted back onto the ER metal gurney and into a bed as the waiting and monitoring began.

Continued…