By Andrew McIntosh
The Sacramento Bee
November 8, 2006
A Nevada County Superior Court judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by a Penn Valley husband and wife who claimed they were duped when they bought health insurance from a Texas firm and were plunged into a financial crisis after falling ill.
Judge Albert P. Dover rejected the claims of David and Darlene Henderson, saying they received exactly the benefits they signed up for when they bought a policy from Mega Life and Health Insurance Co. of North Richland Hills.
Dover suggested consumers must read the fine print before they buy any insurance policies, adding he saw no evidence that the insurer or its sales agents engaged in any fraud or made misrepresentations.
The California Foundation of Taxpayer and Consumer Rights… said Mega Life’s policies are so technical and riddled with jargon that the Hendersons were unlikely to have understood its limits if they had read it.
In 2001, Darlene Henderson became ill with breast cancer. David was later felled by an aortic aneurysm the size of a baseball and needed emergency surgery.
Those medical misfortunes left the Hendersons with more than $210,000 in medical and hospital bills.
Mega Life covered $33,428 of the Hendersons’ bills. The couple were left stunned and quivering when they learned they still owed more than $180,000.
Michael Heenan, a Sacramento spokesman for Mega Life and Health, said… “We work hard to make sure our customers have quality insurance and excellent service at prices they can afford.”
http://www.sacbee.com/296/story/73084.html
Comment:
By Don McCanne, MD
“Caveat emptor” is an axiom in commerce that the buyer alone bears the responsibility for purchasing decisions. As long as we leave the private insurance industry in charge, it is an axiom that applies to health care financing.
Wouldn’t it be much better to have automatic enrollment in a publicly funded and publicly administered health program devoid of technical jargon in fine print? Or is it more important to protect the forces of greed and deception that are unique to our American private insurance marketplace?