Anger in Philadelphia: CIGNA + McCain = Murder by Spreadsheet

Six days before the most important election in my lifetime, it was an auspicious moment to be standing in the lobby of this Murder by Spreadsheet factory.

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See this great, multipart series from the Toledo Blade; from part one, a survey of doctors:

• Ninety-five percent of respondents said insurers interfered with decisions about prescriptions, 91 percent with testing, 74 percent with referrals, and 69 percent with hospitalization decisions.

• Eighty-six percent said interference compromised patient care, 76 percent said it adversely affected their patients, and 65 percent said they were unable to successfully protest denials.

• Seventy percent noted they experience interference at least once a week, with 92 percent answering that interference increased during the past five years.

• Fourteen percent believed interference from an insurer had contributed to the death or serious injury of a patient.

So, if you're insured, that still doesn't mean you're safe, because the insurance companies have taken your medical care out of your doctor's hands.

[I'm leaving this sticky because we've got two RL stories in comments already, one where this series of posts saved a reader over $1000. Read on! -- lambert]

How Crafty Health Insurers Are Denying Care

An estimated 10 to 15 percent of claims are denied for various reasons, some of them technical, such as not meeting filing deadlines or failing to get pretreatment authorizations.

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