Assurant Lawsuit – $37 Million to Jennifer Latham
Jennifer Latham Sued Time / Assurant Health for Breach of Contract
Jennifer Latham had an individual health insurance policy with Assurant Health at the time of a severe accident. She and her husband were both injured, but her husband did not have coverage. Jennifer had taken out a policy 5 months before the auto accident. But when the health insurance company began to get claims, they also began to review her application.
They decided to rescind her coverage because, in their opinion, she had misstated answers on her original appication. This is worse than deciding to cancel her policy, becausse that would mean she would still get the bills paid she had already generated from weeks in the hospital. Instead the company wiped out her coverage as if it had never existed.
But Time’s use of rescission has come under fire before, and they have been sued before. In fact, The practice has triggered a barrage of lawsuits — most of them settled out of court. Last summer, Time’s CEO was grilled before Congress about the fact that his company had saved $150 million in five years by rescinding 8,500 policies,
In fact, the details that Latham did not supply, and said she was not aware she needed to were not related to the auto accident which was caused by a speeding meth dealer. She said an agent helped her fill out the long and complex form, and she never intended to mislead anybody.
Here’s what her lawyer says
“I think there’s a business model here,” Levy says. “The insurance company knows that if they deny a hundred claims, 95 of those people are going to go away. They know that five of them might consult with a lawyer, and that two or three of them might get a lawyer to take their case. And they know they’re going to make it very expensive and protracted for those people to pursue their case.”
Anyway, the jury must hae agreed because of the huge punitive award. Now why can’t we change the rules so that some insurers do not even think of doing business this way?
Look at some of the Top Ranked Health Insurance Companies in the USA.
No related posts.
[...] get sick! This is already supposed to be safeguarded, but you can see many examples (i.e. Assurant and Jennifer Latham and the movie Rainmaker) of insurers trying to retroactively decline their own clients after they [...]