Screwed

If you haven't accepted it yet, perhaps think about this one as well.

One of the nation’s largest health insurers has agreed to pay $50 million dollars in a settlement announced today after being accused of overcharging millions of Americans for health care.

How?

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo says Ingenix has been manipulating the numbers so insurance companies pay less. In a just-released report, he contends that Americans have been “under-reimbursed to the tune of at least hundreds of millions of dollars.” Although UnitedHealth Group and Oxford Insurance were the only entities investigated, other major insurers use Ingenix, including Aetna, CIGNA and WellPoint/Empire BlueCross BlueShield.

If you've been screwed, don't ever expect the screwer to say "Sorry".

Newsflash: To those who use Medicare.

It isn't your personal plaything.

The government paid more than $1 billion in questionable Medicare claims for medical supplies that showed little relation to a patient's condition, including blood glucose strips for sexual impotence and special diabetic shoes for leg amputees, congressional investigators say.

Lovely. I say that if we spend $10 million in salary money to hire people to investigate claims to ensure that fraud is reduced by more than 50%, that would be money well spent. That money should be enough to hire about 150 people, and if their lone job is to perform audits ... that should do the trick.