Saturday, February 26, 2011

Wellcare attorneys drafted Hawaii health care legislation


In a State hearing yesterday, attorneys for Wellcare's Hawaii operation admitted to drafting S.B. 658. This is the proposed new law that would make consumers filing appeals against their health insurers responsible for insurance company legal fees even when the consumer wins the appeal.

S.B. 658 was deferred indefinitely yesterday, but the question remains why our new governor is sending out legislation written by health insurance company lawyers?

The story gets better. After the Ohana/Wellcare lawyers admitted writing the bill, they proposed an amendment that would had made it apply only to people insured under Medicaid. In other words, it would only have applied to their own members.

In my post on Thursday, I asked why Abercrombie was supporting legislation so blatantly anti-consumer. The question has now become why is he letting health insurance company lawyers write proposed legislation.

If you google "wellcare medicaid fraud", you may decide to share my incredulity that Abercrombie is even associating himself with these people.

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About Me

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I'm the mom of a child with disabilities. Hannah's first neurologist said she might never develop beyond the level of a 2 month old infant, and there wasn't anything I could do about it. The brain damage was just too severe. Nine years later, she walks, uses a touchscreen computer and I've just been shown she can learn to construct sentences and do simple math with the right piece of technology. Along the way, I discovered I needed to teach myself what Hannah's rights to services really were. Learning about early intervention services led to reading about IDEA and then to EPSDT. I've been waiting for the Obama administration to realize the power and potential of EPSDT for the medical rights - including the right to stay at home with their families - of children with disabilities. The health reform people talk about long term care, and the disability people talk about education and employment, but nobody is talking about EPSDT. So I am.