An actual reporting

[modhatter]

What a horrible experience Mod! I have never had a health issue to file a claim, but I have heard terrible stories like yours. I am curious as from what I understood even though you were in an individual policy, you are actually assigned to some type of subgroup in it. I was under the impression they could only raise your rates in the same manner as everyone else in your "group". And if you got cancelled, everyone else in that group,got cancelled also. Is that your understanding? Was your whole "group" cancelled or you individually? My terminology isn't strong, but I thought the rescission term was used individually because the insurer claimed a person lied on their health disclosure. Seems like 30 years would exempt you from that. I guess many of these companies just did what the heck they wanted to do to protect themselves instead of the customer. Of course each state may have different rules for these things.

I had a PPO type policy at that time. I don't know how it was structured to tell you the truth. But when I was trying to get insurance again I contacted an insurance broker who told me it would be safer in my case to try and get an HMO, as with HMO's they can't do that. You are essentially part of a group and it would be more unlikely they could single me out.

Yes, today I hear that to cancel you, they generally have to come up with some kind of silly reason like you say. But in my case they didn't. In fact I repeatedly called them to ask them why but my calls were more when they jacked up my rates so high. But as I recall, I was just passed around and no one would help or really answer questions.

I don't know if at the time they were allowed to do that or not. When they tripled my premium I had all ready decided I needed to find another insurance company (not knowing what laid ahead), but before I could do it, they cancelled the policy. Knowing what I know now, I would have challenge them if I knew it was not legal at the time. But at the time I was not aware of these kind of insurance practices.

Here's a great interview I saw that explains a lot about how insurance companies work.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07102009/watch2.html