It’s easy to blame insurance companies, or greedy hospitals, or greedy doctors for the increase in health care costs – but few blame the courts. And there is a lot of blame to lay.
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is the runaway leader in America for being overturned by the Supreme Court. If there is a goofy position, they will adopt it.
Add that to the notion that people have forgotten what the concept of insurance is and you have a recipe for hilarity; unless you are a regular person who would just like to have health insurance for the reasons it is intended – a disaster – but can no longer afford it because courts have determined that it is no longer insurance but instead coverage of anything you might want.
They have determined that the California Mental Health Parity Act requires health plans to cover “all medically necessary treatment” for “severe mental illnesses” under “the same financial terms as those applied to physical illnesses.”
Which means the poor people who can’t get insurance because it is too expensive now have one more thing sucking up insurance money; some rich white girl’s ‘eating disorder’. You may rightfully contend the Mental Health Parity Act is badly written – and it surely is, but the 9th made its ruling and then refused to even let Blue Shield have a hearing before the entire panel of judges.
You may also argue that the plaintiff in this case is legitimate, and you have a point, but the ruling here sets out no limits because they couldn’t even get a full hearing so a bad law and a bad ruling means this has no bounds – meditation and crystals will now have to be covered if someone claims that is their mental health cure.