I’m still shocked by this, but Aetna has terminated my health insurance for no reason - I’ve made all my premium payments timely. Aetna concedes this fact. I received no notice that the policy would be terminated. Aetna tells me there was no reason my health insurance should have been terminated, but they won’t re-instate it. At most they just sheepishly tell me “we’re working on it” and nothing ever gets fixed. Sometimes they say they’ll call me back in 24 hours to let me know the status - nobody has ever called me back. I can tell from the service reps’ voice that they know they’re lying to me, and they know this was intentional and that it’s never going to be re-instated. One lady sounded like she was about to cry. This is intentional - policies don’t get cancelled by mistake.
I’m one of those people who couldn’t get a health insurance policy prior to the Affordable Care Act because of pre-existing conditions (nothing too serious, not cancer or aids or anything like that). I’m pretty it costs them more to pay for my medication etc (even though they’ve refused to pay for pretty much everything) than I pay for my monthly premium. The whole point of the ACA was to force everyone to buy insurance to spread around the risk/cost amongst everyone. But they still see policies like mine as a loss. Now it seems they’ve found a loophole - just terminate the policy without cause and keep the premium payments. Take my money and give me nothing in return - blatant theft.
It’s criminal, it’s healthcare fraud, it’s breach of contract, it violates state and federal law. But that being said, as far as I can tell I really don’t have any meaningful remedy. I’m not going to be able to find a lawyer to take the case on a contingent basis - at most I can prove less than $3k in actual damages. To pay a lawyer hourly would cost more than I’d ever hope to recover in court. You can’t count on getting punitive damages. And Aetna knows this - which is why they’re doing it.
I can’t be the only one they’ve done this to - has anyone else experienced this or heard of them doing this to someone else? It sure looks like they can get out of paying for people with pre-existing conditions by simply terminating our policy, leaving us with no coverage, and just saying “fuck you” when we call them to demand that they fix it.
The really sad thing is that if I sign up with some other health insurance company for a new policy for 2015, Aetna wins - they get exactly what they want - they got rid of me. And it looks like they’re also going to get away with stealing nearly $1000 in premium payments I’ve made (timely, which they had no problem taking).
I have to assume all the health insurance companies have figured this out and are just terminating expensive (from their POV) policies left and right. Again, no justification exists or is given for why the policy has been terminated - they concede it should not have been. Unless the government is going to do something - and I know they won’t - it sure looks like I am left with no meaningful recourse. The only thing I can think of is to somehow get the media involved, but this doesn’t involve a Kardashian so I’m not even going to waste my time.
After this experience, it seems delusional for me to expect another health insurance company will take $300 in monthly premiums and pay $600+ per month for medication etc. They’ll just do the same thing and wrongfully terminate my policy after a few months. Why shouldn’t they? It’s good business as long as they can get away with it. And it sure looks like they can. Am I better off just paying the “no health insurance tax”?