Comments on: When Health Coverage Doesn't Hold Up

CBS News Investigates How Individual Health Insurance Providers Can Deny Big Claims

[slaadams]

Nepats1234 - your employer's worker's comp. should pay. I would pursue the employer - an attorney will probably be necessary.

Health Insurance for some reason is held to a higher standard then all other insurances. You cannot buy auto insurance if your car has already been crashed - you may be able to cover the rest of the car but not the part that is already damaged. Just as health insurance will often put a permenant rider on a preexisting condition regarding health. You cannot buy flood insurance if your house is under water. Yet everyone with a health condition thinks they deserve health insurance that will cover their preexisting condition. Each state has different companies - some work like BCBS in MI that will cover anyone, with any condition after a 6 month wait on prex conditions. I own a nationwide Health Insurance Agency and Assurant Health is one of the most popular companies that we sell, I have seen several situations where they pay very large claims - but that does not make the news. I have several clients that I could not pry away from Assurant Health, but I have others that aren't 100% happy with them. I have yet to come across a plan or company that everyone loves.

[jtrue67]

I'm single mother with degenerative disc disease. I can only work 30 hours a week and cannot afford the insurance available through my job. After years of paying medical bills out of pocket, I HAD to relenquish my pride and put my daughter and myself on state-sponsered insurance. I have a good primary care doctor, but can't get any kind of specialist - they just won't take my insurance. All my doctor can do at this point is try to get me medications so that I can function, but to no avail - they aren't covered. I have spent countless hours on the phone and driving from my doctors to the pharmacy and back again. Health Net continues to use every stall tactic in the book - taking well over a month while I scramble for "pre-authorization" and "medical necessity forms", even outright lying to me and offering me over the counter alternatives only to finally deny them. Of course, they give themselves another two weeks to "review" my appeal...while I wait in agonizing pain. How is this right?

[rudy654-2009]

See, this doesn't happen in other Western Nations because they have universal health coverage. Goodness, put these vicious sharks (health insurance companies) out of business!! They shouldn't be alowed to pray upon our weaknesses.

[mickisuzanne]

I can't believe someone finally lifted the rock to reveal the heartless, conscienceless moneygrubbing evil that is Fortis/Assurant. Four years ago I was struck by a mystery illness that left me with crushing exhaustion, confusion, joint pain and heart symptoms. Unfortunately, my disability was through Fortis. When I told them I was so sick I was barely able to rise and shower let alone drive, they told me to take a bus to work. I spent two years, sick as a dog, with morphing symptoms, fighting for disability. I finally received my diagnoses just as they were to give the final determination - Lyme Disease. Fortis laughed. DENIED. It took another two years after IV treatment, careful attention to my health and a move to a warmer, less polluted environment to get my strength back. Meanwhile I have lost everything I worked a lifetime to earn - including my home. Alone, struggling, 56 yrs old, uninsured and probably uninsurable, my biggest fear is that my health will fail again and my family will go down in flames financially trying to save me. I would, quite honestly, rather die.

[nepats1234]

I would like to know how these insurance companies are getting away with this. I was hurt in work. I had given my employer a doctors note not to put me on a certain machine. The employer put me on it anyway. My back blew out. Now I have been fired from my job. Lost my health insurance, and am being told it will cost me thousands of dollare to be insured because I have a pre-existing back and heart problem. Pre- existing. It wasn't pre-existing when I worked. Now it is pre-existing. I had insurance when it all happened. I was fired from my job and my insurance was taken away. How can this happen to an American who has worked and payed insurance for over 35 years? The insurance company for workers compinsation dosn't want to pay either. So now I may loose my house I'v been in for over 18 years. I have writen to the govener and the local news stations and they all say it isn't anything they can work on. Why is that? Someone is having a problem loosing $40,000. I am going to loose over a million due to my employers neglect and there isn't anything I can do? What a wonderful world.