Mar 29 2010
The Huffington Post Investigative Fund on the case of Heather Galeotti, a woman in a coma after being hit by a car: "[I]n July 2007, five months into Galeotti's treatment, Kaiser [Permanente] stunned the family with a letter. The Galeottis would have to find another way to pay the bills. Based on information received from her father's employer, Kaiser said that the young woman's coverage had not been in effect when she was hit." (Neither KHN nor the Kaiser Family Foundation is affiliated with Kaiser Permanente). Galeotti's coverage had been previously approved. "Like many insurance disputes, the Galeotti case has its share of miscommunication, bureaucratic wrangling and missing documents. But it remains a stark example of a murky practice by some insurance companies and employers - cutting off coverage retroactively for some patients with expensive medical claims" (Ivory, 3/26).
 This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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