Insurance company liabilities regarding patient care decisions

by Dallas Hoback
(Jeffersonville In)

When your insurance company knows that you are unable to make proper medical decisions for yourself due to mental evaluation that they paid for - but yet allow your doctor to perform an Extreme medical procedure.

Could you hold them liable when they knew the risk of the procedure with the insurance company knowing more of the risk and liabilities behind the procedure than the patient and not notifying and or consulting with the patients?

Is this what we want from our insurance companies that we pay? I would think the insurance companies would want to protect us to keep their costs down but yet they allow our doctors to make our medical decisions when we may not be mentally capable of making the proper decision.

They have a much larger resource of outcome from the procedures then the patient would. At what point should our insurance companies be held liable for what our doctors are coercing patients into for their financial benefit? I would think our insurance companies should be overseeing any patients that they know that have been evaluated and mentally are incapable of making the best decision for themselves. Yet they don't consult the patient, they consult the doctor - the one that is profiting off of the procedure. Does it seem like a logical way of taking care of our patients?

Response:

Great questions and observations. I’ll post and ask our visitors to comment and provide additional insight.

Thanks!