The Anthem Blue Cross lawsuit was filed against the New York State Department of Financial Services for allowing a pension insurer to engage in an illegal act of self-dealing. Let’s say that you have a friend who had a sweetheart deal with a certain company while he worked there. One day, he suddenly became ill and required expensive medical treatment. In the end, he decided not to pay the money he owed to the insurer because he “misunderstood” the terms and conditions. What does this have to do with the Anthem Blue Cross lawsuit?
Well, first of all, we are talking about the State of New York and its decision to allow a pension insurer to run an investment program that involved awarding kickbacks to employees for opting out of their guaranteed retirement benefits.
This was done in violation of New York State Law. The kicker, though, is that the State didn’t even have to do anything in order to make this legal. A pension administrator can legally give an employee a small cash bonus or discount on his or her next annuity payment if that employee joins another organization that is associated with the same company. That doesn’t sound like much, but these types of transactions happen all the time and most people don’t even realize that they are taking place.
As you can imagine, the ramifications of such a scheme are quite significant and unfortunately, this type of thing has been going on for years.
There are many whistle blowers that have come forward to complain about how they lost money and have suffered due to illegal activities by their employer’s underwriters and actuaries. As the economy sours and companies continue to downsize, it is becoming more apparent that pension plans are being abused and some unethical acts have been uncovered. This led to the recent lawsuit filed in favor of the New York State Department of Financial Services and Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield of New York.
Now, you might be wondering why anyone would want to sue the one company that gave them a decent pension plan to protect them from loss of income should they become ill. Well, the answer is simple.
The company is guilty of charging premiums that are significantly higher than everyone else while failing to properly compensate those who were injured or lost money due to the underwriting practices. Basically, they charged a higher rate than every other company on the market and took a good chunk of change from the employees pockets.
The State of New York does not have the power to force the insurer to repay the money if it was illegally selected.
The State of New York has the authority to file a civil law suit against the corporation in order to recoup losses. You should expect Anthem to be filing the lawsuit themselves because they are obviously feeling the heat from the State of New York. The company is facing an uncertain future and many wonder what will happen to the distribution channel as well as the entire pension plan. While no one is looking forward to a class action suit like the one filed against Anthem by the New York State Department of Financial Services, the company faces a crisis.
In order to encourage responsible business practices among insurance companies, the State of New York has set up a “regulatory oversight board”. The regulators are meant to police the payments of settlements to injured individuals and determine whether or not they are being charged fairer compensation than other companies. The state created the Office of Insurance Regulation to oversee changes to the insurance industry.
If the state ends up forcing the company into bankruptcy, then the employees of Anthem Blue Cross will be owed a portion of their remaining bonuses and will also be required to work for a different company.
These types of financial penalties are designed to force companies to live up to their portions of the bargain. If you choose to ignore the terms of your settlement quotes, you may find yourself in a worse financial situation within a year of the date of injury. While it may be the way things end up, do not expect the company to offer any sort of financial assistance to the aggrieved party when this happens.
If you have been injured as the result of a car accident, the last thing you want is to get stuck with a huge amount of debt that you cannot pay. The Anthem blue cross lawsuit quotes will help you find the best settlement possible for your case. Just because you have been adversely affected by this type of accident does not mean you cannot seek compensation. The company has been sued many times before for refusing to pay in this manner. They are experts at settling these cases and making sure their clients’ rights are protected.