Balance stealing

They call it "balance billing." I call it balance stealing. It's fraudulent, and it's illegal. Yet it goes on.

Greedy HMO's and other medical firms are now going after patients for money they don't even owe. Patients often don't know they don't owe it. So they pay it.

This happens when insurers don't pay what they're supposed - so the health care provider makes the patient make up the balance.

It's a mutually understood pattern of greed between insurers and HMO's. You know each of these parties knows about what the other does, because the practice has continued. Occasionally an insurer will sue the provider - but usually they don't.

As a result of this gluttony, American consumers pay over $1,000,000,000 (a billion) annually that they don't really owe. It goes straight into the deep coffers of HMO's and for-profit medical facilities.

Not only is this illegal. It's also racketeering: Health providers employ collection agencies to threaten patients until they pay what they don't owe. Usually they threaten to ruin their credit rating. (Credit ratings are themselves a big racket.)

It's illegal now, but right-wing members of Congress are trying to legalize it. Rep. Tom Price (R-Georgia) and known asshole Rep. Tom "Teeny Weenie" Feeney (R-Florida) have sponsored bills to make it legal. These efforts have been backed by the American Medical Association's right-wing lobbyists. (The AMA is known for other right-wing causes too, like trying to censor media materials.)

Hopefully the DLC won't let the Far Right get its way like they did with the failed troop surge. But it also begs asking why enforcement of the current laws is so weak. (Gee, let me guess.) The government needs to come down hard on balance stealing.

(Source: http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/08_36/b4098040915634.htm)