Washington, D.C.--In his speech to Congress on health care reform, President Obama justified his proposed government health care takeover by saying "More and more Americans pay their premiums, only to discover that their insurance company has dropped their coverage when they get sick, or won't pay the full cost of care. It happens every day."As it turns out, however, health insurance is hardly ever rescinded by insurers, and when it is, it's done pursuant to rules that allow dropping customers whose applications include misrepresentations, or conceal relevant coverage information. Indeed, that appears to have been the case with the examples of rescissions Obama used in his speech to Congress. Further, government-run Medicare denies claims at the highest rate, more than double the average denial rate of all private plans.
In light of these exceedingly rare rescissions the President is using to justify his radical reinvention of the nation's entire health care system, Obama during his address saw fit to single out for recognition Edward Tumbley, one of the very few “green eyeshades” whose assessments contributed to the less than half of one percent of all health care policies rescinded under traditional rules.
"In order to find the most egregious examples in which insurers dropped customers from health care coverage," said Obama, "Congressional staff reviewed 116,000 pages of documents from three large health insurers, which identified a total of about 20,000 rescissions from millions of policies issued by the insurers over a five-year period. We could only find the couple examples I used in this speech, and even those are questionable. Consequently, I would like to single out Edward Tumbley, one of a relatively small handful of insurance employees whose decisions I can use to push my massive government health care takeover."
Tumbley rose to raucous applause in the congressional chamber, but remained humble after the ceremony.
"I really don't deserve this recognition," said Tumbley. "I mean, health insurance is very rarely rescinded. I guess I was in the right place at the right time from the President's perspective."
Associated articles: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203440104574409501904118682.html?mod=rss_opinion_main; http://www.slate.com/id/2228706/; http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/09/29/obamas-health-care-horror-story-inaccurate/; http://biggovernment.com/2009/10/05/ama-endorses-largest-denier-of-health-care-claims/; http://apnews.myway.com/article/20091025/D9BI4D6O1.html
