ObamaCare is gonna be such a panacea.
According to the 2008 Health Insurance Report Card (PDF) released by the American Medical Association, the “carrier” with the highest percentage of denials is . . . Medicare. Does it still sound like we need to put the government in control of (or develop a public option to compete with) health insurance companies to prevent them from denying claims?
(Aetna, by the way, is now the primary insurer of Medicare)
Metric 12—Percentages of claim lines (i.e., records) denied Description: What percentage of records submitted are denied by the payer for reasons other than a claim edit? A denial is defined as: allowed amount equal to the billed charge and the payment equals $0. Source: NHXS
Payer Count of records Denied records Percent of claim lines denied
Date range Aetna 637,239 43,317 6.80% 03/01/2007 – 3/10/2008 Anthem 250,070 11,546 4.62% 03/01/2007 – 3/10/2008 CIGNA 263,728 9,060 3.44% 03/01/2007 – 3/10/2008 Coventry 20,487 590 2.88% 03/01/2007 – 3/10/2008 Health Net 4,975 193 3.88% 03/01/2007 – 3/10/2008 Humana 143,026 4,142 2.90% 03/01/2007 – 3/10/2008 Medicare 6,938,431 475,566 6.85% 03/01/2007 – 3/10/2008 UHC 1,127,691 30,177 2.68% 03/01/2007 – 3/10/2008 http://www.statehousecall.org/which-insurer-denies-the-most-claims
Just wait until the government trainwreck takes effect. Socialized medicine is going to be such fun.