Rescission is the term health insurance companies use for their practice of dropping you after you’ve encountered catastrophic injury or disease by finding chickenshit errors in your paperwork that they can use to justify canceling your policy.

WellPoint health insurance actually gave scores on a 1 to 5 scale in employee evaluations to encourage the practice. One underwriting executive saved Wellpoint $10 million for doing such a good job screwing people over.

How many of you reading this have Florida Blue Cross Blue Shield? Well BCBS rescinded Robin Beaton’s insurance last year after she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. Blue Cross said this was because she had neglected to state on her forms that she had been treated previously … for acne.

WTF? indeed.

However, under some state laws the practice is legal if done within the allowable time frame (typically up to two years after a policy is issued).

Fortis Insurance Co. rescinded Otto Raddatz’s health insurance after he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma because Raddatz did not include in his paperwork a prior CT scan showing an aneurysm and gall stones.

The kicker … Not only had Raddatz’s docter  never told Raddatz about the results, but they were “very minor” and didn’t require treatment.

The outcome? Fortis refused coverage until the state attorney general intervened. The delay caused Raddatz’s window of opportunity to treat the disease to shut, and he died.

I’m not saying the current healthcare reform package is the best answer to our healthcare disaster … but it does outlaw recission.

For those caught up in the scandal, two approaches to dealing with it have emerged. Many players such as Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens have chosen to outright, adamantly, and repeatedly deny the allegations. Others, exemplified by Alex Rodriguez, have chosen to come clean so to speak and openly discuss their guilt.

I can only speak for myself, but Alex Rodriguez has saved his reputation in my mind by being a man about it, owning up to it and openly discussing his transgressions. I wish him nothing but the best and continued success in the future and I hope he can lead the way to a clean Major League Baseball.

On the other hand, I am completely offended by the likes of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens who have not chosen the higher road and have attempted at every turn to use lame and unconvincing excuses for why they aren’t guilty. This tactic has turned the tide of public opinion against them. I for one do not wish to see them in the Hall of Fame.

This tactic of owning up to your transgressions and admitting your faults is a powerful influencer of opinion. Confession is one of the foundations of Catholicism for reason and lawyers have begun to catch on.

I participated in a mediation yesterday in a medical malpractice case where the hospital was quite clearly negligent. However, the Florida Legislature passed a law saying that if a medical malpractice victim is not married and does not have children under 25, then no one can bring a wrongful death claim on their behalf. The only legal claim available in that case is for the pain and suffering of the victim, not her relatives.

In our case, the victim only lived for about 20 days past the time she began suffering from the injury the hospital inflicted so the damages that her estate could collect would be limited to the dollar amount that a jury believed would properly represent her pain and suffering for that short period.

The hospital’s defense counsel shrewdly used this to their advantage and indicated that at trial, the hospital would admit negligence. The hospital would “pull an A-Rod.” Not only would this admission soften the jury’s opinion of the hospital, but it would have important legal ramifications as well.

By admitting fault, the hospital would avoid the ill will that Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens have incurred. Perhaps more importantly, that move also would mean that I could not present evidence at trial to prove that the hospital was negligent because that evidence would be rendered unnecessary by their admission.

If a jury could not hear all the horrible things that this hospital did to my client, the jury would be less likely to award a high amount of damages. All the jury would hear about would be the pain and suffering my client endured in those short 20 days that remained in her life.

It was a shrewd move and also one defense lawyers urge doctors to adopt. Studies show that if a doctor simply apologizes for injuries he inflicts on patients, then that doctor is significantly less likely to be sued by that patient.

Fortunately, this type of depraved conduct is rare among health care professionals. However, plenty of warning signs existed that should have directed patients away from this doctor. The doctor in this story made at least five medical malpractice payments in the past decade. One such payment is not necessarily a deal breaker, but when a doctor has made five malpractice payments in the last decade, to me that exhibits a pattern. I would avoid that doctor at all costs. Fortunately, such information is easy to access.

The Florida Department of Health maintains a website that provides important information on all licensed health care professionals, not only doctors. When you arrive at the webpage, click on the “Profile Search System” link and enter the name of the person you are investigating. Then click on the license number to access information describing the person’s credentials as a health care professional. You can check such things as board certification, license validity, criminal offenses and malpractice payments.

For more information on medical malpractice, visit my website.