Ocassional Thoughts of an Independent Progressive Atheistic Humanist
The US Supreme Court is hearing arguments about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). Specifically 26 states are challenging the individual mandate which requires all people to buy health insurance. The largest voice against the mandate are Republicans. Why are Republicans so against a pro-business policy like the individual mandate?
I have HCR hangover and we still have another bar to hit. The Stupak agreement is another example of Christian privilege that violates my religious rights and a woman’s right to her body. I hope that the price was enough and that we keep working on shaping the reform into what it should be including a viable Public Option that ends the monopoly practices of the health insurance industry.
I watched some of the Health Care Reform meeting held on Thursday February 25th at Blair House in Washington DC. President Obama is trying to move the processes along so something is passed before the November elections. It was also clear that really the Republicans have no intention of voting for the reform.
The Republican’s position was to start over and use all our ideas.
Sounds just like those lawyers from insurance companies that try to deny or delay claims so that people will just give up.
My views on this subject are well known – just search on the tags – so I don’t have much to say about the meeting. One thing I will point out is that CNN decided that their non-elected talking heads were more important than hearing was actually being said in the meeting. The media also decided to make it a game and decide who “won”. What a waste of air.
That’s why I stuck to the live feed from C-SPAN.
Saw this on the net today:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW ORLEANS — Hurricane Katrina victims whose homes and businesses were destroyed when floodwaters breached levees in the 2005 storm cannot recover money from their insurance companies for the damages, a federal appeals court ruled today.
“This event was excluded from coverage under the plaintiffs’ insurance policies, and under Louisiana law, we are bound to enforce the unambiguous terms of their insurance contracts as written,” Judge Carolyn King wrote for a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
As a result, the panel found those who filed the suit “are not entitled to recover under their policies,” she said.
More than a dozen insurance companies, including Allstate and Travelers, were defendants.
The decision overturns a ruling by U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval Jr., who in November sided with policyholders arguing that language excluding water damage from some of their insurance policies was ambiguous.
Duval said the policies did not distinguish between floods caused by an act of God — such as excessive rainfall — and floods caused by an act of man, which would include the levee breaches following Katrina’s landfall.
But the appeals panel concluded that “even if the plaintiffs can prove that the levees were negligently designed, constructed, or maintained and that the breaches were due to this negligence, the flood exclusions in the plaintiffs’ policies unambiguously preclude their recovery.”
Who in their right mind would NOT buy insurance that covers flood damage if you live in a flood prone area like the bowl we call New Orleans?
No one would.
Then again, if you live in a flood prone area – you can’t get regular insurance coverage for water damage. You must buy flood insurance from the federal government.
My guess is average people don’t know that and I also guess that some of that info may have been withheld so the broker could make a sale on the policy. It wouldn’t be the first time.