julianpenrod
Joined: 07 Mar 2002
Posts: 303
Location: west caldwell, new jersey, united states |
apparent massive criminality by the insurance industry
 Thu Jan 27, 2005 4:33 am
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Julian Penrod
4 Fairfield Avenue
West Caldwell, New Jersey 07006
(973) 220-1601
julianpenro@comcast.net
January 26, 2005
Letters to the Editor
Dear sirs:
As crucial as it is to oppose the foul and the low, it is just as important to be able to recognize them, when you see them.
The last few years has seen a nember of political trends develop, in the country, from the insistence on remaking Social Security to the "projecting of force" around the globe as a tool of American foreign policy. Unfortunately, there have been many more patterns shaping up, which many seem to have failed to recognize. And, because these represent agendas at work, in the present, and apparent sentiments to be built upon, in the future, failure to recognize them threatens to keep people from being aware of dangers to their rights, down the road.
One of these is the increasing hegemony of the insurance industry, and ceaseless encroachment of industry demands on the rights of the public. And subsequent quisling backing down of government to the demands of the industry to act against the welfare of the public!
With increasing frequency the insurance industry, and its evident partners in crime, the courts and, primarily, the medical field, along with government, have apparently colluded to abridge the rights of the people, all in service to "the right of the insurance industry to make a profit"! If you look at any interplay between the "rank and file" and corporate Goliaths, you will see a steady and constant sentiment on the part of the government that a company's "need to make a profit" trumps the rights of the individual! If a company wishes to make unreasonable demands, even infringing on inherent civil rights, in their lecherous lusting after the dollar, government will tell people they have no right to demand that the company imperil its profits! "If you don't like it", government thugs say cold-bloodedly, "just go somewhere else!" But, if the industry provides a product available nowhere else, govenment's response is just, "Well, what do you want us to do? We don't have the right to endanger big business' search for profit! And neither should you!"
This has become grindingly apparent in the case of the insurance industry! With predatory persistence, insurance companies have chipped away at personal freedoms, in their search of the perfect scenario, namely, someone paying them huge premiums, but their never being obliged to pay any of it back! Satellite imagery has been used by some companies to adjudge certain houses perilously close to wooded areas, that might catch fire! Stipulations on the type of house one can build, and how they can landscape the area around it are required by insurance companies, before they provide home owners policies! And, even then, they constantly amend the rules, apparently intending that, eventually, they will so intrude on the policy holder's rights that they will rebel and actually do something they like, rather than what the policy demands. Then, when something goes, wrong, they will declare that the policy had been violated by the homeowner, and summarily declare themselves absolved of any obligations! And their evident paid whores in government and the courts will parrot the same phrases!
The Michigan based Weyco Corporation has begun firing its employees if they smoke! All medical insurance providers stipulate that, in cases of personal injury, they will not pay on the policy unless your “doctor” utilizes the least drastic, most conservative, and least expensive form of treatment first, even if that treatment is not called for, and even unwise or dangerous to your health! Blue Cross/Blue Shield of New Jersey has tried to make paying benefits to policyholders contingent on government passing laws apparently aimed at deregulating the insurance industry! Mercury Insurance has hitched premiums to policyholders’ credit histories, based on the apparently specious “explanation” that “those who pay their bills on time are less likely to file insurance claims”. It was, evidently, carefully dismissed that those who pay on time often have more money than they need, and people like that usually have more than enough money to pay for their damages, without going through the evident scam that filing an insurance claim seems to be! Add such apparently eminently unethical tactics as a company deliberately sending out a payment form to a policyholder late, so they get the payment back late, and can summarily drop their policy, with the intention of charging them more, when they re-apply! And they have the gall to perpetually lambaste the public for “insurance fraud”, which seems to comprise a sheer minimum of insurance claims! Insurance companies regularly simply refuse to pay out on genuine claims, then rely on the “Iron Triangle” of bribes evidently constantly flowing between the industry, the “legal” profession and the “medical” profession, to dutifully dismiss the legitimate case, without remuneration! Eliot Spitzer, in New York, seems to have only scratched the surface of fraud and criminality within the insurance industry itself, against the public! But his sudden decision to, evidently, completely shelve the project, so he could run for mayor, seems tacit evidence of the ability, and willingness, of the industry to massively bribe any political figure, so they would leave them without any oversight! No wonder there is no federal department to oversee corrupt practices in the insurance industry, and many states “rules” on insurers seem so flimsy as almost not to constitute a system of rules at all!
A good case in point is the policy of New Jersey with respect to an apparent avowed intention of the automotive insurance industry there to literally rape the driving public! One of the first indications of wholesale government complicity in raping the public was the passing of legislation that only those with insurance could drive legally. If people complained that insurance rates were unfair, Trenton response, apparently, was just, “Too bad! What do we care? We can’t stand in the way of the companies making money! And you’ll be breaking the law, if you drive without insurance! So just pay what the companies demand and shut up! After all, you just pay our salaries, but the insurance industry pays our bribes!” Even this, though, did not achieve the kind of strong-arm extortion that the industry wanted. Many still drove without insurance! They then went whining to their evident whores in government, insisting on action. Disgraced evident crook, Governor Jim McGreevey, immediately complied to the call to criminal mistreatment of the public. Legislation was promptly introduced to deny those without insurance the right to sue utterly, even if they were involved in an accident where the insured driver was at fault! The fact that most of the car accidents in the state seemed to be caused by CEO’s brats, stoned out of their head on heroin, also demanded action, and Trenton complied by also passing a law stating that, in any accident, the maximum that could be paid by either side is the amount of the smaller policy! In this way, when an unwed mother of four gets permanently and totally crippled, by the cocaine sniffing offspring of the Mayor of Middletown, driving his $150,000 SUV, she can expect no more than the amount of her own necessarily paltry policy!
If you need more proof of the evident fact that the government of New Jersey is relentlessly dedicated to protecting criminal business from prosecution by an aggrieved public, consider that it took until January 26, 2005 for the courts of the state to rule that builders could be “fined” for faulty workmanship! If it took so long for the courts to find contractors answerable for their work, don’t expect the extent of the “fines” to be anything significant for an even longer time yet to come! And don’t ever expect the courts of the state to even consider what they seem to consider outlandish beyond words, namely, the public being allowed any real recompense for shoddy workmanship with substandard materials!
The issue of malpractice insurance for doctors seems equally informative! Aware of the apparent fact that the Caribbean school graduates flooding the “medical” field seem destined to do infinitely more damage than good, the insurance industry seems to have launched on a general campaign to literally overturn the very idea of compensation for injury! Evidently conspiring with the apparent frauds calling themselves “physicians”, the industry has arranged for “doctors” to opine that they can no longer afford malpractice insurance! And this supposedly hinges on the double whammy of so-called “frivolous cases” and “pain and suffering awards”! The only solution, they say, is to completely gut the concept of paying the victim for the harm done them! The idea of doctors not walking out in the middle of spine operations, to do some banking,; or their not mis-prescribing medication, because a pharmaceutical rep bribed them to do so, with a Jamaican trip; or their not arriving at the operating theater reeking of gin, never entered the issue! Instead, they lobbied for the eliminating of pain and suffering awards. They went on strike, to try to force the people the butchered to shut up about how they were harmed! They even started refusing to treat people, for supposed fear of being sued!
And, incidentally, government never went after the “doctors” for refusing to help the public! After all, the doctors have to be able to make their profit! If a member of the “rank and file” refused to perform a service local government wanted, they would apparently have the citizen pummeled to within an inch of their life! “In the service of democracy”! Let “doctors” refuse to treat patients, because the patients have the annoying habit of telling the truth about their butcheries, and, the “doctors” are the wounded party! And, now, even though government has steadfastly refused to protect the right of the public by instituting oversight on the insurance industry, the president has promised to arranged to act to thwart the people being provided legitimate recompense for when members of the “medical” industry commit effective assault with a deadly weapon! Apparently dutifully defining every legitimate case of massive malpractice as automatically “frivolous”, Bush has effectively defined the very practice of reimbursing the victim of medical malpractice as throwing money away!
This somewhat mirrors Steve Forbes reptilian analysis of the crisis with Vioxx and Celebrax not as a matter of criminally culpable pharmaceutical houses defrauding patients with lies masquerading as “analytical reports”, but as “greedy lawyers” looking for a way to stick it to the unerringly noble and long-suffering drug companies, who aren’t the slightest bit interested in profit, and would never do anything wrong! It also hearkens to U.S. Chamber of Commerce president, Thomas Donohue, literally warning the French government not to introduce the concept of “class action suits”, insisting they would, supposedly, “damage the French economy” and shift money from “good companies to lawyers”!
Preventing the genuinely aggrieved from monetary damages seems a watchword with industry, in general, these days!
It is not surprising that some movements have grown up, to try to combat criminality by the insurance industry! One, for example, is Fight Bad-faith Insurance Companies, or FBIC. Looking on their site, www.badfaithisurance.org, can give an insight into the extent of insurance industry criminality, as well as provide a list of dangerous insurers - The Hartford seems far and away the worst company to put your trust in! - and provides in-depth material on crimes that insurers regularly seem to commit!
Now, comes word that the apparent Republican puppet show calling itself the “Supreme Court” has ruled that “the full amount of a court award is taxable to the successful plaintiff”, and this is the case even if a significant fraction of that award is to go to the plaintiff’s attorney! It appears the government is determined to prevent aggrieved members of the “rank and file” from getting deserved remuneration if they have to send trained killers out into the streets to mug them! Now, not even the legitimate amount, calculated as being due and owing, and necessary to defray costs caused by malpractice, is safe! The courts will dutifully go through the evident fiction of determining how much the plaintiff will need “to be whole”, then government will come along and make certain they don’t get it! It’s extremely telling that whether the lawyer will later be taxed on the payment they receive from the plaintiff is completely glossed over! Evidently because they are not intended to be taxed! How else to collude with a corrupt attorney not to blow the whistle on evident wholesale criminality in the courts?
Add to this an ugly little secret that is regularly ignored, in discussing the supposedly “overinflated” awards for “frivolous” cases. For some years, now, the policy in handling financial awards has been not to provide the exact settled-upon amount. Instead, the victim is victimized a second time by the court. The system in place, now, for paying a “settlement” or an “award” does not entail the individual getting the amount agreed upon by the court. Instead, the guilty party is merely required to supply a token sum called “seed money”! This is expected to be placed in a bank account, and allowed to grow, through interest, to the amount of the “award” after twenty to thirty years time! In this way, even if the evident wholesale criminality of the courts is thwarted, and the genuinely guilty are taken to task, financially, the government still provides that they will never have to pay what they truly owe! After all, where does interest on bank accounts come from, except from the "rank and file" who continue to consume low quality goods at obscene prices! And, if the aggrieved, even injured, party needs some of the award money, to make up for losses sustained by the actions of the guilty, they are allowed to withdraw from the account, but that only diminishes the final amount they will accrue through interest! But the court isn’t interested in this! They provided the “seed amount”; they didn’t force the aggrieved to make a withdrawal! It’s not their business if the wounded party wants to pursue their rights! Their only obligation is to the rich, to make sure they stay rich!
After all, this is a “democracy”, and the apparent transcendent law in any “democracy” is, “The rich have to get richer, by the ruthless and unprincipled exploitation of the ‘rank and file’! The ‘rank and file’ exist only to make the rich richer! And government’s only role is to make sure the ‘rank and file’ don’t get in the way of the wealthy getting wealthier!”
The first step in opposing malignance is admitting that it exists! The people have to openly acknowledge the fact that it is the insurance industry that appears to be committing the true criminality with respect to litigation, and attacks on the “rank and file” for “insurance fraud” appear nothing more than a wholesale scam, intended to make those who should be on the offensive defensive!
The second step is for the public to be on the offensive! They should look into the websites that document criminality by insurance companies, against the welfare of policyholders! They should add their own tales of horror! They should write letters to the editor, acknowledging every case when companies like The Hartford demonstrate that the real purpose of insurance is to steal the people’s money, then engage in criminal collusion to avoid respecting their contractual obligations! They should contact every politician they can, time and again, with flood after flood of letters, condemning insurance companies for their evident corruption, and the politicians for their evident quisling willingness to allow it! They should flood newspapers with letters to the editor about politicos who show no sign of giving up on the apparent bribery gravy train the insurance industry is using to make sure it can continue raping the public!
The third step is to avoid purchasing any insurance that the thugs in government haven’t defined, by “law”, that you have to purchase! Experience indicates that, if you deposit regularly in a bank account, you will always have more cash at hand than any insurance policy will ever provide!
Fourth is to just keep reminding yourself that you can’t trust anything any CEO, politician, judge or member of the media says!
Most importantly, the people have to involve themselves, deeply and determinedly, in government around them, so that, when the next case of criminal collusion by a political figure becomes apparent, they can raise the alert immediately, spread it widely, and announce it loudly!
Julian Penrod |
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