with an eye toward a decision in every case in which a policyholder simmons a claim relating to leukemia, breast cancer or in any of a list of 1400 serious or costly medical conditions. rescinding policies based on alleged failure to disclose the health condition entirely unrelated to the policyholders current medical problem. rescinding policies based on policyholders failure to disclose a medical condition after doctors never told them about. rescinding policies based on is a mistake by policyholders and applications in rescinding coverage for all families -- for rescinding coverage for all members of a family of a summit million to disclose medical condition of one family member. investigation has also found that at least one insurance company wellpoint evaluated employee performance based in part on the amount of money is simply saved the company to retroactive decisions of other insurance policies. according to documents obtained by the committee, one wellpoint officials was awarded it risk for a five, for exceptional performance. based on having said the company nearly $10 million

is there website or doctor or somebody that can help them when they have leukemia, they have lost coverage, or they lost their jobs, and with their job gone they have lost coverage. and also, on the other guy who said that the democrats and the union -- excuse me, there are republicans also in the union's. we pay a high price for being in the union. host: about 50 more minutes for your calls on the health care proposals of the administration. the first draft circulating on capitol hill. here is another headline from "usa today and it mentions that business groups are critical of the early draft. it is a risk that could complicate president obama's goal of achieving bipartisan support for his top domestic priority. criticism comes during what obama's called a maker break time for health care. he hopes to sign legislation by a october, but business groups say the provisions of the draft bill are too far reaching for broad support. senator chuck grassley is involved in the negotiations. over the weekend he used twitter to make his sentiments known to the president. he is a top republican in t

including conducting an investigation in ever case in which a policy holder has leukemia or any of a list of 1,400 serious or costly medical conditions. rescission is entirely unrelated to the policy holders unrelated problem. conditions that their doctors never told them about. rescinding coverage for all families -- excuse me, rescinding for all members of the fallly based on not disclosing one medical condition of a family. well point evaluated family performance base on the amount of money the employees saved the company on retroactive decisions. according to documents, one well point official was afforded a perfect score of five for exceptional performance, based on having saved the company $10 million through rescissions. these practices reveal that when an insurance company received an expensive treatment, some of them will look for a way, any way to avoid having to pay for it. this is very eerily similar to what we found last year where unscrupulous sales people would sell policies to seniors and would revoke the policy once it was blocked in making payments. the companies ar

it's the same with other conditions, such as leukemia. in the written statements for today, the three insurance companies downplap the significance of these practices, arguing that recisions are relatively rare. but these three companies save more than $300 million over the past five years as a result of recisions. and i'm sure they view this amount as significant. more importantly, however, these terminations are extremely significant to the tens of thousands of people who needed health care and couldn't get it during these five years because their policies were rescinded. in my opinion, of course, the solution to these problems is to pass comprehensive health reform legislation, and based on the written testimony, i think the three insurance companies testifying here today agree with that assessment. but until that happens, insurance companies deny people coverage, if they have a pre-existing condition, and then afterwards if they gave them the coverage for insurance, they want to see if there's some reason they can rescind it after the

so, when you have failed three courses of treatment on recurrent leukemia and there's a drug that will give you a 30% chance of living freer for years, and they are saying you can't have it because you are not worth it, and shall not be construed does not protect american seniors, american adults and american kids from that kind of bureaucratic malfeasance. >> mr. chairman? >> mr. chairman i do think it is important to understand what this quality of life is all about. the most crass terms, what they do in england is, they say that a life is worth 20 to 40,000 pounds a year. and vinnette procedure exceeds that price, you don't get the procedure. i don't think we want to go that way, down that road in this country so i think we have to have an absolute ban on that concept of russian. otherwise, we are not going to be able to control the bureaucracy which looks of england and says, that is a good way to do it. even if it is implied they should not use it, that is not going to be good enough. uft s- tory len whitson says he cannot put a value on a life and have a procedure that exceeds th

this is june so we are working with the american cancer as society and leukemia and i can go on. as i said we literally do hundreds of programs. my favorite is a new one this year we tried to kick it off. we've really been able to ramp up and that's this year's d.c. high school initiative. one of the only things i've been able to get the mayor and city council to agree on. we all love the d.c. high school initiative and under this program every d.c. public high school their baseball team is invited to come and spend the day having a full baseball team practice at our ek spends at national park. it's a great thrill for the kids and a great motivator for these kids and an addition each d.c. public high school for every child in that school baseball player or not, every child will get a ticket to a game on that high schools day at the ballpark. thousands of tickets, thousands of kids come to the national park that would have no other way to do this except this exciting program we are doing at our expense. we are happy to do it. i hope it's building future fans and increasing morale

if you have lymphoma or leukemia or cancer and your blood count drops, don't forget that your doctorsn't get to really make a decision about when you get aridge row poiten, something to bring your counts back up, because medicare has already decided when you can have that. without consideration of your con come dunt other problems. that's where you're walking with this. if you like that, if america likes that, then let's do it. just remember it's rationing. we're saying, you're not worth great health care. i think every american is worth great health care, and i think competition in terms of professional quality, in terms of delivery of services, and competition among the insurance industry is not where it should be. and i think we ought to drive it where it should be because i think it will help us allocate resources. nothing should happen to somebody like patricia irvin that senator casey talked about. we failed. but we crated a lot of inflation in health care by cost shifting medicare and medicaid costs on to the cost of private health insurance. it's at minimum $1,800 a family a

it's the same with other conditions, such as leukemia. in the written statements for today, the three insurance companies downplap the significance of these practices, arguing that recisions are relatively rare. but these three companies save more than $300 million over the past five years as a result of recisions. and i'm sure they view this

this has to do with it, stomach, liver, pancreas, kidney, bladder, cervix, and even acute myeloid leukemia. there is so much we don't know about cancer: how it is caused, how it progresses and how to treat it but we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that many types are part at least in part by tobacco use. so i firmly believe that the passage of this bill will lead to a reduction in cancer, and most importantly, to cancer deaths. and it will give the f.d.a. the ability to make the cigarettes currently available less toxic and less cars know gentlemen nick and less add -- less carcinogenic and less addicting. for example, a study by david burns and christie anderson, both of the university of california, san diego school of medicine, suggest that cigarettes smoked today may double the risk of lung cancer compared to cigarettes smoked by americans 40 years ago. now that's amazing. remember all the unfiltered cigarettes of yesteryear? so you would think those cigarettes would be stronger, right? no, they're saying. they attribute this to a change in the chemicals which have been added in recent