Insurance industry unveils new monument to the elderly.

There are weasels in America and they work in the insurance industry. The latest proof comes from a NY Times story about denying old people's claims until they die. One of the biggest weasels is Conseco, a company that in 2006 took in more than 4 billion dollars in premiums and yet denied assisted living claims made by an old woman who had paid her premiums when healthy and now needed help.

Denied, said Conseco. They said she was healthy as a horse at age 81 and implied the old woman was a malingerer, goldbrick and potential fraud for having the audacity to file a claim.

The nerve.

Then, that tactic not holding water, Conseco said she'd waited too long. Then it said her state-licensed assisted living home wasn't an "approved facility." Jesus, these guys change their stories so often they could work in the White House.

But it would be wrong to pick on Conseco alone. There are, unfortunately, other weasels in the pen. In fact, the investigation by the Times uncovered the shocking fact that insurance companies will do anything to avoid paying. Some insurers prohibit their employees from returning calls from policyholders.

And neglect is one of the more benign tactics. A subsidiary of Conseco, Bankers Life and Casualty, sent an 85-year-old woman suffering from dementia the wrong form to fill out and then denied her claim because she had filled out the wrong form.

I don't know how the executives sleep at night on their 400-count Egyptian cotton sheets.

From the Times article:

“The bottom line is that insurance companies make money when they don’t pay claims,” said Mary Beth Senkewicz, who resigned last year as a senior executive at the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. “They’ll do anything to avoid paying, because if they wait long enough, they know the policyholders will die.”

That's their strategy. Put off the old people long enough and they'll die. If there is any justice, all these insurance executives will contract a horrible, disfiguring, painful disease and their claims for coverage will be denied.

And don't even get me started on health insurance.

Weasels. Every last one of them.