Insurance companies have started hiring doctors with long histories of medical malpractice claims against them to DENY claims of their policy holders. Most of the major insurance companies in this country are using doctors that have dismal records to tell YOU that your prescriptions or medical procedures won’t be covered by insurance. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: Insurance companies have started hiring doctors with long, long histories of medical malpractice. They hire ’em to deny claims. That’s why they’re doing it. Most of the major insurance companies in this country are using doctors that have dismal records to tell you that your prescription or your medical procedures just aren’t gonna be covered by insurance. What a scam. Again, who comes through on this, Lever?
Farron Cousins: ProPublica.
Mike Papantonio: No. ProPublica.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And this was actually said to me by a medical malpractice attorney, and she was absolutely stunned by what’s going on here. Because we have these doctors who not only have millions of dollars in malpractice lawsuits, many of them have been disciplined. They’ve been busted for fraud. We’re talking real criminal behavior. And now they’re working for hundreds of thousands a year for insurance companies saying, no, don’t cover this procedure for this patient.
Mike Papantonio: The worst part about it is the people doing this, for example, you may have a podiatrist that’s close to losing their license. They’ve been sued for malpractice, whatever it may be. Anesthesiologist, they’ve been sued for malpractice. They can’t really carry on a practice. So they go to work for $400,000 with these companies. And the part, the podiatrist is telling a cardiologist, no, you can’t allow this treatment to take place. There’s no, they’re not even in the same field. They have no idea what that cardiologist is trying to tell the podiatrist. It’s just automatic denial. About 10,000 a month for some of them. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. I mean, they go through these things, rapid fire, because obviously the less you cover, the less the insurance company pays. So there’s big incentives, by the way, for these doctors, even with their horrible histories, they couldn’t get a job at a free clinic because they’re so bad with the malpractice that yeah, hey, you deny a certain number of claims, you’re gonna get a big bonus this year. Your base pay is $400,000, but we may throw in a couple extra hundred thousand depending on how much money you save us. And so these doctors that have no business practicing, they’re dealing with areas, like you said, that are outside of their expertise. A hundred percent. And they’re just looking on paper and saying yes or no.
Mike Papantonio: We’ve talked about this before, but first of all, let me clarify something, you know, it’s less than 2% of the doctors that create all the malpractice. That’s a startling number. Less than 2% create all the malpractice in the medical field. I think that’s a startling number. But we’ve talked about the idea that once Wall Street started buying up these small doctor run hospitals, you’d have these small towns where you’d have 10 doctors that owned the hospital, and they’re invested in that hospital in every sense of the word. They want things to go well. They want good patient care. Wall Street saw that, hey, this is a big profit center for us. So they started buying, just buying ’em up by the dozens, all over the country. Now they control 80% of the hospital healthcare out there. Wall Street does. So the cats that hire these people who have malpractice histories that are gonna say anything, anything the insurance company wants ’em to say to the tune of, I saw a report 10,000 a month. Some of these doctors are doing 10,000 denials a month. And so, yeah, for the right money and as you say, hey, throw in a bonus. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And to your point also about the hospitals buying up the, or Wall Street buying up the hospitals, the hospitals then buy up all the local doctors.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: So you can’t find an independent physician anymore. They’re saying, oh no, I’m a part of this medical group. So they do all the billing. They take all the pressure off me. But no, what they’re really doing is becoming part of this conglomerate that, again, is also in some instances, partnered at the hip with the insurance company telling us, no, you can’t have this. No, you can’t have this prescription. No, that surgery for a deviated septum, that’s mostly cosmetic. So we’re not gonna.
Mike Papantonio: Or experimental, or we don’t.
Farron Cousins: Right. It’s ridiculous. Look, they gave me issues about covering my carpal tunnel surgery. And this is what we’re dealing with because healthcare is so privatized.
Mike Papantonio: Well, it’s Wall Street, is controlled by Wall Street. When you have to call Wall Street to see if you can have heart surgery, which happens, happens repeatedly. We get calls here all the time. They say, look, I gotta have this procedure done or they say that I have two years to live. And they’ll call and say, we gotta get this done. And oh no, that’s experimental. We can’t put any money behind that. It’s the worst of the worst. And anytime you have Wall Street involved, you’re gonna have the worst. They’re trying to do this with the legal field. You’re seeing these law firms that are national law firms, Wall Street’s trying to do the same thing. They tried to buy us. I mean, you know, ridiculous. But the point is this, that’s their MO. Find out where the money is and then go and take advantage of everything you can with that industry. Whether it’s the dental industry. You’re seeing these dental clinics come up everywhere. Massive dental clinics. Optometrists, massive optometry. And the kids coming outta school it’s a pretty good deal. You’re coming through medical school. You owe $500,000. And so rather than going out there and hanging up your license and saying, I’m gonna start my own practice, just go, you know, go with the hospital. Go with these corporation groups, and it’s all become corporate and this is what’s happening with it.
