Evil

Some insurers have begun milking a new cash cow: long-term care insurance. The policies are designed to pay for nursing home care when policyholders can no longer take care of themselves. That's how they're supposed to work. In a growing number of cases, according to a New York Times investigation, they don't work that way.

Tens of thousands of elderly Americans have received life-prolonging care as a result of their long-term-care policies. With more than eight million customers, such insurance is one of the many products that companies are pitching to older Americans reaching retirement.

Yet thousands of policyholders say they have received only excuses about why insurers will not pay. Interviews by The New York Times and confidential depositions indicate that some long-term-care insurers have developed procedures that make it difficult — if not impossible — for policyholders to get paid. A review of more than 400 of the thousands of grievances and lawsuits filed in recent years shows elderly policyholders confronting unnecessary delays and overwhelming bureaucracies. In California alone, nearly one in every four long-term-care claims was denied in 2005, according to the state.

“The bottom line is that insurance companies make money when they don’t pay claims,” said Mary Beth Senkewicz, who resigned last year as a senior executive at the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. “They’ll do anything to avoid paying, because if they wait long enough, they know the policyholders will die.”

I hate insurance companies that play games with people's coverage. I have personal experience with trying to get a company to pay for a covered service for a family member. They employed delaying tactics that were beyond belief. My favorites were the letters informing us that the claim/appeal had been denied, and that if we had any questions, we were encouraged to call the sender of the letter. The letters included no name or contact information for the senders. We fought with them for eight months. We were more fortunate than most due to the fact that our situation was not life-threatening, and we finally got them to pay up, but nobody should have to go through anything like that.

These people are playing games with people's lives. They are hurting people because they can. The only word for that is "evil."