Of course, raising the problem of bad faith still takes political courage. As conservative commentator Kevin Phillips remarked through several election cycles, while pro-corporate absolutists in the GOP refuse even to raise such issues, Democratic candidates and officeholders have refrained from driving hard on them--leading to perceptions before 2008 that "the Democrats can't fight their way out of a paper bag, as Phillips put it--for fear of offending their corporate donors. The performance of so-called ˜Blue dogs' and so-called GOP ˜moderates' in the Senate, in the current health care debate, fits the pattern. And while Senate opposition to a public option is losing credibility, the delaying tactics have had effect; as other writers have pointed out, every day or week of congressional delay profits the insurance industry. Fortunately congressional leaders are at least moving to undo the anti-trust exemption enjoyed by insurance carriers.
Even with a public option, we will still have work to do. For future reference:
Bad-faith practices in insurance include denying claims without reasonable justification, requiring duplicative information, refusing to provide coverage, unjustified policy cancellations and retaliatory rate increases. Several bad-faith practices involve the claims department " misrepresentations about claims handling, failing to handle claims promptly, and systematically delaying settlement.
On insurance bad faith, there are two areas of consensus among industry critics, defenders and observers:
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