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health insurer must pay $9 million for cancelling woman's policy
When Patsy Bates began her battle against breast cancer, she didn't expect she would also have to battle her health insurer too.
Bates faced the bureaucratic diagnosis of rescission: when a health insurer retroactively cancels your insurance policy. But in a precedent-setting decision announced last week, a California judge ordered Bates' insurer to pay her more than $9 million for dropping her policy after it learned she had cancer.
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Not only did she receive a $9 million punitive damages settlement against Health Net Inc., one of the largest for-profit insurers in California, but the company also announced Friday that it had stopped the controversial practice of canceling sick policyholders' policies.
In the landmark ruling, the outraged judge wrote: "She had valid health insurance ? when the rug was pulled from underneath, and that occurred at a time when she is diagnosed with breast cancer, one of the leading causes of death for women."
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