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 Well BCBS rescinded Robin Beaton’s insurance last year after she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer.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Fortis Insurance Co. rescinded Otto Raddatz’s health insurance after he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma because Raddatz did not include in his paperwork a prior CT scan showing an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.

I’ll be blogging about many issues including lawyer advertising in Florida and why it is so awful (we have the Florida Bar to thank for that). The chilling effect of the Florida Bar’s heavy handed enforcement of its advertising rules is a theme will run though this blog and was the inspiration for its title. In addition to commenting on lawyer advertising, I will also be lobbying the Florida Legislature to reform and improve our laws on child abuse. This blog will follow those efforts closely. Other blog topics will include legal discussions of negligence in nursing homes, accidents and medical settings. Finally, my personal interests will certainly shine through now and again.

That’s all for now. You’ll learn much more about me in the future. For now, I’m headed out for a 70 mile bicycle ride. I’m training for the Florida Ironman. Swim 2.4 miles, Bike 112 miles, Run 26.2 miles, brag for the rest of your life.