Health insurer tied bonuses to dropping sick policyholders

Continuing coverage from the Los Angeles Times...she was dropped right in the middle of her breast cancer treatment...first public trial..additional links below to video coverage...makes you wonder why we are pushed to have insurance coverage if this is what we have to look forward to if we don't have the "perfect body" that will enable us to have health insurance...sometimes there are more important things in life than having to be "right" all the time, especially when human lives are involved...I feel it's more important perhaps to "do the right thing"...where are all these people without some kind of existing condition? If one digs deep enough you might be able to find something wrong with all of us today. Incentives with many companies are in place for bonuses, but you do have to ask when it comes to human lives, is this wrong? No wonder it's difficult to get the targeted youth market to buy health insurance when you have one story after another appearing with horror stories like this one...BD

Woodland Hills-based Health Net Inc. avoided paying $35.5 million in medical expenses by rescinding about 1,600 policies between 2000 and 2006. During that period, it paid its senior analyst in charge of cancellations more than $20,000 in bonuses based in part on her meeting or exceeding annual targets for revoking policies, documents disclosed Thursday showed.

Other suits have been settled out of court or through arbitration, out of public view. Until now, none had gone to a public trial.

Health Net had sought to keep the documents secret even after it was forced to produce them for the hearing, arguing that they contained proprietary information and could embarrass the company. The documents show that in 2002, the company's goal for Barbara Fowler, Health Net's senior analyst in charge of rescission reviews, was 15 cancellations a month. She exceeded that, rescinding 275 policies that year -- a monthly average of 22.9.