Health Insurer Encourages Survival of Fittest

Why is it little surprise that a health insurer would work to exclude sick people?

According to the American Association of Justice, quoting Lisa Girion, writing for the Los Angeles Times, “one of the state’s largest health insurers set goals and paid bonuses based in part on how many individual policyholders were dropped and how much money was saved.

Woodland Hills-based Health Net Inc. avoided paying $35.5 million in medical expenses by rescinding about 1,600 policies between 2000 and 2006. During that period, it paid its senior analyst in charge of cancellations more than $20,000 in bonuses based in part on her meeting or exceeding annual targets for revoking policies, documents disclosed Thursday showed.”