Group Health Insurance

If You Think a Mistake Has Been Made

If the insurance company believes you have a past health problem, they may not sell you insurance. If the insurance company is correct, your only recourse may be try another insurance company or attempt to get into a group with a policy that does not take preexisting conditions or past illnesses into account. On the other hand, if you believe the insurance Group Health Insurance has made an error about your health, here are a few things you can do:

Ask for additional tests. Screening health tests can be performed in a perfunctory manner. If you believe the test results are wrong, you can ask for additional tests. Unfortunately, if you choose to go this route, you will probably have to pay for the Group Health Insurance tests yourself.

Ask the insurance company to send the tests to your doctor. Your doctor can review the insurance company tests against your medical records. If a mistake has been made, your doctor may be able to locate the error and inform the company, which may get them to change their minds.

Get copies of your medical information bureau records. You may not know it, but your medical history may be on file in the Medical Information Bureau (MIB), in much the same way as your credit record is on file with TRW. When you apply for Group Health Insurance company insurance, your company may have contacted the MIB and receive a copy of the report, and under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, you have a right to if the report is the cause of the denial. MIB can be contacted.

Consumer Alert:

The health insurance crisis has gotten beyond the point where individual consumers can do much to protect themselves against increasing premiums. Oh, you can increase your deductible and co-payments, but that is only a holding action at best. And you can switch companies—if you can get past the preexisting condition exclusion and waiting periods. But, even then, your next premium notice will undoubtedly put you back into the same fix you were in when your former company raised its Group Health Insurance rates.

 No, the only way the entire system can be stopped from imploding will be for national action to be taken to control the costs of medical care and guarantee universal health insurance coverage, either through the private or public sectors or a combination of both.

With so much money at stake, with the power of health insurance industry, and with the medical community resisting change, it will take vigorous and concerted grass-roots activism to bring about needed Group Health Insurance reforms. That means you—Uncle Sam wants you to demand reform and not take no for an answer!

…Continued in Abilene employee benefit consulting