United Health: Minnesota company unites in deserting the insured

If your insurance company is denying your health care claims, it pays to be a California resident. Since 2006 California’s Department of Managed Health Care has been investigating consumer complaints about insurance being snatched away when it’s most needed, as in the middle of chemotherapy, for example. One of the most egregious companies, according to a number of California claims? Minnesota’s own insurance monolith, UnitedHealth Care.

California has gained national attention recently for ordering insurance companies to pay up. And now “online activism,” including repeated calls from the California Nurses Association, has forced PacifiCare, a California insurer under  UnitedHealth Group (aka the worst insurance company in the country, according to a recent survey of hospitals), to pay for a 17-year-old boy’s cancer treatment. The boy, Nick Columbo, has bone cancer.

Both the Daily Kos and the Consumerist reported Wednesday that  UnitedHealth was denying Columbo what’s known as CyberKnife treatment, which his doctors had recommended. (Read the PDF).

Later in the day, a representative of the Minnesota company told the Consumerist that the decision to deny the boy doctor-recommended treatment had been reversed.  And he added the unrepentant caveat that Columbo’s case was being used as a “political tool.”