Fighting Health Insurance Denials

Fighting Health Insurance Denials PDF Author: Scott Glovsky
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780692568828
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description
Health insurance companies claim to act in their customers' best interests, but quite often fail to deliver on that promise. In this step-by-step guide, health insurance attorney Scott Glovsky examines the lawyer's role in helping a client navigate a health insurance denial, from understanding consumer rights, the appeals process, independent medical review, through the intricacies of an insurance bad faith lawsuit, and how the Affordable Care Act has impacted health care law. Drawing from decades of experience from large firms and from his own private practice, Scott uses his unique client-centered approach to shed light on this important and often misunderstood practice area.

Fighting Health Insurance Denials

Fighting Health Insurance Denials PDF Author: Scott Glovsky
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780692568828
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 156

Get Book Here

Book Description
Health insurance companies claim to act in their customers' best interests, but quite often fail to deliver on that promise. In this step-by-step guide, health insurance attorney Scott Glovsky examines the lawyer's role in helping a client navigate a health insurance denial, from understanding consumer rights, the appeals process, independent medical review, through the intricacies of an insurance bad faith lawsuit, and how the Affordable Care Act has impacted health care law. Drawing from decades of experience from large firms and from his own private practice, Scott uses his unique client-centered approach to shed light on this important and often misunderstood practice area.

Delay, Deny, Defend

Delay, Deny, Defend PDF Author: Jay M. Feinman
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101196289
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
An expose of insurance injustice and a plan for consumers and lawmakers to fight it Over the last two decades, insurance has become less of a safety net and more of a spider's web: sticky and complicated, designed to ensnare as much as to aid. Insurance companies now often try to delay payment of justified claims, deny payment altogether, and defend these actions by forcing claimants to enter litigation. Jay M. Feinman, a legal scholar and insurance expert, explains how these trends developed, how the government ought to fix the system, and what the rest of us can do to protect ourselves. He shows that the denial of valid claims is not occasional or accidental or the fault of a few bad employees. It's the result of an increasing and systematic focus on maximizing profits by major companies such as Allstate and State Farm. Citing dozens of stories of victims who were unfairly denied payment, Feinman explains how people can be more cautious when shopping for policies and what to do when pursuing a disputed claim. He also lays out a plan for the legal reforms needed to prevent future abuses. This exposé will help drive the discussion of this increasingly hot- button issue.

Never Pay the First Bill

Never Pay the First Bill PDF Author: Marshall Allen
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593190009
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
From award-winning ProPublica reporter Marshall Allen, a primer for anyone who wants to fight the predatory health care system--and win. Every year, millions of Americans are overcharged and underserved while the health care industry makes record profits. We know something is wrong, but the layers of bureaucracy designed to discourage complaints make pushing back seem impossible. At least, this is what the health care power players want you to think. Never Pay the First Bill is the guerilla guide to health care the American people and employers need. Drawing on 15 years of investigating the health care industry, reporter Marshall Allen shows how companies and individuals have managed to force medical providers to play fair, and shows how you can, too. He reveals the industry's pressure points and how companies and individuals have fought overbilling, price gouging, insurance denials, and more to get the care they deserve. Laying out a practical plan for protecting yourself against the system's predatory practices, Allen offers the inspiration you need and tried-and-true strategies such as: Analyze and contest your medical bills, so you don't pay more than you should Obtain the billing codes for a procedure in advance Write in an appropriate treatment clause before signing financial documents Get your way by suing in small claims court Few politicians and CEOs have been willing to stand up to the medical industry. It is up to the American people to equip ourselves to fight back for the sake of our families--and everyone else.

Know Your Rights

Know Your Rights PDF Author: Jennifer C. Jaff
Publisher: Advoc. for Patients w. Chronic Ill.
ISBN: 0977749207
Category : Chronic diseases
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description


Making Them Pay

Making Them Pay PDF Author: Rhonda D. Orin
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429979100
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Most people don't understand health insurance, and insurance companies know it. Unfair denials, late payments, and hopeless confusion are the norm. At last there is a solution. In eight easy steps, Making Them Pay gives practical advice about the things that drive people crazy. Like: -Figuring out what health plans really say -Understanding what benefits they provide -Finding, and understanding, the exclusions -Determining what health plans really cost -How to talk to customer service, and other painful details -Easy ways to keep good records -Laws that can change your life-like the mandatory benefits laws in all fifty states -How to prepare successful appeals Along with this useful advice, Making Them Pay offers a much-needed sense of humor. It's filled with cartoons, sidebars, and vignettes that will make you laugh as you learn. Based on Rhonda D. Orin's extensive experience as a litigator, a journalist, and a mother fighting her own family's insurance battles, Making Them Pay is the book your health insurer doesn't want you to read. "A compact reference [that] simplifies a convoluted subject. -

Solved! Curing Your Medical Insurance Problems

Solved! Curing Your Medical Insurance Problems PDF Author: Adria Goldman Gross Fipc
Publisher: Outskirts Press
ISBN: 9781478760566
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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Book Description
Consumer protection advocate Ralph Nader praised Solved! Curing Your Medical Insurance Problems: "Who hasn't been bewildered and outraged by lengthy, inscrutable medical bills and the tricky ways of the health insurers? ....Learn what to watch out for in this volume by authors who know the inside ways of sellers who try to take you to the cleaners." Some say, "You get what you pay for." If only this were true! Too often, consumers find themselves paying much more than they expected, getting much less than they bargained for. Medical care is no exception. In their book, the authors show readers how to spot over-charges by providers, under-reimbursements by insurers, and inappropriate denials by insurers and government employees. Furthermore, they presented steps to take to prevent being victimized by "the system." And what is the system? In America, it is a hybrid of private healthcare providers, massive insurance companies, and governments at the state and national levels. Unlike Britain with its single-payer National Health System, this public-private mixed-breed creates the need for patient advocate professionals, who take up the cudgels on behalf of the medically disadvantaged and the financially strapped.

Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders

Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders PDF Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309439124
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 171

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Book Description
Estimates indicate that as many as 1 in 4 Americans will experience a mental health problem or will misuse alcohol or drugs in their lifetimes. These disorders are among the most highly stigmatized health conditions in the United States, and they remain barriers to full participation in society in areas as basic as education, housing, and employment. Improving the lives of people with mental health and substance abuse disorders has been a priority in the United States for more than 50 years. The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 is considered a major turning point in America's efforts to improve behavioral healthcare. It ushered in an era of optimism and hope and laid the groundwork for the consumer movement and new models of recovery. The consumer movement gave voice to people with mental and substance use disorders and brought their perspectives and experience into national discussions about mental health. However over the same 50-year period, positive change in American public attitudes and beliefs about mental and substance use disorders has lagged behind these advances. Stigma is a complex social phenomenon based on a relationship between an attribute and a stereotype that assigns undesirable labels, qualities, and behaviors to a person with that attribute. Labeled individuals are then socially devalued, which leads to inequality and discrimination. This report contributes to national efforts to understand and change attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that can lead to stigma and discrimination. Changing stigma in a lasting way will require coordinated efforts, which are based on the best possible evidence, supported at the national level with multiyear funding, and planned and implemented by an effective coalition of representative stakeholders. Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders: The Evidence for Stigma Change explores stigma and discrimination faced by individuals with mental or substance use disorders and recommends effective strategies for reducing stigma and encouraging people to seek treatment and other supportive services. It offers a set of conclusions and recommendations about successful stigma change strategies and the research needed to inform and evaluate these efforts in the United States.

Deadly Spin

Deadly Spin PDF Author: Wendell Potter
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1608193500
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
That's how Wendell Potter introduced himself to a Senate committee in June 2009. He proceed to explain how insurance companies make promises they have no intention of keeping, how they flout regulations designed to protect consumers, and how they make it nearly impossible to understand information that the public needs. Potter quit his high-paid job as head of public relations at a major insurance corporation because he could no longer abide the routine practices of the insurance industry, policies that amounted to a death sentence for thousands of Americans every year. In Deadly Spin, Potter takes readers behind the scenes of the insurance industry to show how a huge chunk of our absurd healthcare expenditures actually bankrolls a propaganda campaign and lobbying effort focused on protecting one thing: profits. With the unique vantage of both a whistleblower and a high-powered former insider, Potter moves beyond the healthcare crisis to show how public relations works, and how it has come to play a massive, often insidious role in our political process-and our lives. This important and timely book tells Potter's remarkable personal story, but its larger goal is to explain how people like Potter, before his change of heart, can get the public to think and act in ways that benefit big corporations-and the Wall Street money managers who own them.

Healthcare Unhinged: The Making of an Advocate

Healthcare Unhinged: The Making of an Advocate PDF Author: Liz Helms
Publisher: Page Publishing Inc
ISBN: 168289732X
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
Helms takes us through her unfiltered, uplifting story of chronic pain and severe depression to becoming a nationally recognized coalition builder and health care advocate as she battled to change a system that had failed millions. With stark honesty, she describes her personal struggle for appropriate care and the redemption she found challenging some of America’s most powerful, for-profit corporations on behalf of patient fairness and access to affordable, appropriate standards of quality care for all. “The power of one” an often over-used cliché, but the soul’s message of Unhinged; one woman joined by many to face down one dragon at a time; one voice joined by a chorus to alter forever, the conversation. Helms plots a roadmap for anyone who, even while questioning their own value or power, can move mountains unimagined by owning their voice, their sense of justice and their purpose. Armed with truth, directed purpose and willful respect, Helms proves that the ‘Lion’s den’ is but a myth, waiting to be challenged and exposed as such on behalf of all concerned.

An American Sickness

An American Sickness PDF Author: Elisabeth Rosenthal
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698407180
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
A New York Times bestseller/Washington Post Notable Book of 2017/NPR Best Books of 2017/Wall Street Journal Best Books of 2017 "This book will serve as the definitive guide to the past and future of health care in America.”—Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene At a moment of drastic political upheaval, An American Sickness is a shocking investigation into our dysfunctional healthcare system - and offers practical solutions to its myriad problems. In these troubled times, perhaps no institution has unraveled more quickly and more completely than American medicine. In only a few decades, the medical system has been overrun by organizations seeking to exploit for profit the trust that vulnerable and sick Americans place in their healthcare. Our politicians have proven themselves either unwilling or incapable of reining in the increasingly outrageous costs faced by patients, and market-based solutions only seem to funnel larger and larger sums of our money into the hands of corporations. Impossibly high insurance premiums and inexplicably large bills have become facts of life; fatalism has set in. Very quickly Americans have been made to accept paying more for less. How did things get so bad so fast? Breaking down this monolithic business into the individual industries—the hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, and drug manufacturers—that together constitute our healthcare system, Rosenthal exposes the recent evolution of American medicine as never before. How did healthcare, the caring endeavor, become healthcare, the highly profitable industry? Hospital systems, which are managed by business executives, behave like predatory lenders, hounding patients and seizing their homes. Research charities are in bed with big pharmaceutical companies, which surreptitiously profit from the donations made by working people. Patients receive bills in code, from entrepreneurial doctors they never even saw. The system is in tatters, but we can fight back. Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal doesn't just explain the symptoms, she diagnoses and treats the disease itself. In clear and practical terms, she spells out exactly how to decode medical doublespeak, avoid the pitfalls of the pharmaceuticals racket, and get the care you and your family deserve. She takes you inside the doctor-patient relationship and to hospital C-suites, explaining step-by-step the workings of a system badly lacking transparency. This is about what we can do, as individual patients, both to navigate the maze that is American healthcare and also to demand far-reaching reform. An American Sickness is the frontline defense against a healthcare system that no longer has our well-being at heart.