Confessions of a Recovering Pharisee

[Baltimore Sun]

A woman who had her medical coverage canceled as she was undergoing treatment for breast cancer has been awarded more than $9 million in a case against one of California’s largest health insurers.

Patsy Bates, 52, a hairdresser from Lakewood, had been left with more than $129,000 in unpaid medical bills when Health Net Inc. canceled her policy in 2004.

The award came a day after the Los Angeles city attorney sued Health Net, claiming it illegally canceled the coverage of about 1,600 patients. City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo also said the company illegally ran an incentive program in which it paid bonuses to an administrator for meeting targets of policy cancellations.

Health Net acknowledged that such a program existed in 2002 and 2003 but was subsequently scrapped.

“It’s hard to imagine a policy more reprehensible than tying bonuses to encourage the recision of health insurance that helps keep the public well and alive,” Cianchetti wrote in the Bates decision.

Read about it here.

[From me]

What kind of sicko person would think of an incentive program that hurts people at the worst time in their life?

What do you think?

[Herald-Leader]

A lawyer for the first officer of Comair Flight 5191 has asserted a novel, and controversial, defense in 21 lawsuits filed against him: that the 47 passengers of the doomed flight share the blame for their deaths.

In response to questions from a plaintiff’s lawyer, James Polehinke’s lawyer asserted that the passengers killed in the Aug. 27, 2006, crash should have known that Blue Grass Airport was dangerous because of considerable media coverage of a massive runway construction project there. They should have known the air traffic control tower was understaffed, that airports in Louisville and Northern Kentucky are safer and that taking off in the dark is dangerous, wrote William E. Johnson, a well-known attorney from Frankfort.

Attorney David Royse, who represents two families, said it amounts to a blame-the-victim strategy. Polehinke had asserted “contributory negligence” — legalese for saying the other party is also at fault and contributed to their injuries.

“We find it ironic and disingenuous that he would suggest the passengers are now at fault when he was the pilot and he had all this information,” Royse said.

Read about it here.

[From me]

This has to be one of the dumbest claims I’ve ever heard!  How is it the victims’ fault?

What do you think?

[Houston Chronicle]

A mandatory moment of silence for Texas schoolchildren has a secular purpose of encouraging thoughtful contemplation and does not advance or inhibit religion, a federal judge said this week in a ruling upholding the 2003 state law. U.S. District Judge Barbara M.G. Lynn of Dallas ruled in a lawsuit brought by a North Texas couple who objected to the law as an unconstitutional promotion of religion.

In her opinion, issued Thursday, Lynn said “there is no doubt” several legislators, including the bill’s author, Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio, expressed a purpose to “put prayer back in schools.”

But legislative debate also focused on other ways students could spend the 60 seconds.

Read about it here.

[From me]

Interesting topic. I’m curious what my atheist friends think about this. If all you are doing is asking for students to be silent–how is that prayer? As a former teacher I would have enjoyed 60 seconds of silence.

What do you think?

[Chicago Sun-Times]

Three Kane County inmates, in a $2 million lawsuit filed this week, say the food served in the jail is unreasonably “distasteful and disgusting.”  The three inmates gripe in the suit that not only is the food often cold and the baked goods “soggy,” the calories and nutritional value are “not up to par.”

Read about it here.

[From me]

Please!  You break the law–you get what you get!

What do you think?

[WLKY]

A father is in a courtroom battle, trying to keep his son from attending a Catholic high school.

The parents involved in this case are divorced. David Ryan, the father, is an atheist. The mother is a Roman Catholic. Their son, who is in the eighth grade, attends a Catholic school in Oldham County.

“This is something where it can’t be both ways,” said Ryan’s attorney, Edwin Kagin. “We think the constitution wins.”

Read about it here.

[From me]

What does the constitution have to do with this? If the boy was already attending the school and the mother won custody, then the judge probably wanted the boy to have some stability. I think the dad wants him to go to public school not because of the indoctrination but because he doesn’t want to shell out the cash!

What do you think?