Health care in America: what Constitution?

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Both par­ties to this con­tract, by enter­ing into it, are giv­ing up their con­sti­tu­tion­al right to have any such dis­pute decid­ed in a court of law before a jury, and instead are accept­ing the use of arbi­tra­tion. Both par­ties also agree to give up any right to pur­sue on a class basis any claim or con­tro­ver­sy against the oth­er. —€”from Blue Cross HMO Exclu­sions and Limitations

OK, I can appre­ci­ate that they are attempt­ing to pro­tect them­selves from the «ever greater liti­gious­ness» pur­port­ed­ly at work in the Unit­ed States. Who does­n’t want to cov­er their ass­es? But you got­ta love it: if you want to sur­vive the gun­shot you’ll inevitably receive as a cit­i­zen of this gun-crazy land (and yes, I believe in the Con­sti­tu­tion and the right to bear arms; the «right to» and the «intel­li­gence of the deci­sion to» are not the same thing) you must sign away your con­sti­tu­tion­al right to have your dis­pute set­tled by a court of law. I guess «Life, Lib­er­ty and the Pur­suit of Hap­pi­ness» are unalien­able, but the rest of the Con­sti­tu­tion is negotiable?

Published by splicer

4 Replies to “Health care in America: what Constitution?”

  1. “if you want to sur­vive the
    “if you want to sur­vive the gun­shot you’ll inevitably receive as a cit­i­zen of this gun-crazy land, you must sign away your con­sti­tu­tion­al right to have your dis­pute set­tled by a court of law.”

    ha ha
    new heights of
    hypocrisy

  3. some of the stuff that
    some of the stuff that health insur­ance (or employ­ers for that mat­ter) have you sign away is a (weak) attempt at hav­ing you give up your rights. Often when it comes down to court cas­es though, the doc­u­ments don’t hold up and the indi­vid­ual does indeed have rights the health insur­ance com­pa­ny tried to con­vince them they did­n’t. I can’t give you spe­cif­ic exam­ples, but I would­n’t sweat it too bad.

  4. Yeah — i was going to say
    Yeah — i was going to say some­thing like that — you can’t actu­al­ly sign away your con­sti­tu­tion­al rights. not to an insur­ance com­pa­ny, any­way. You might want to look for the clause in the con­tract that says some­thing like “any­thing is this con­tract that would be unlaw­ful in any state is here­by declared void.”

    but arbi­tra­tion isn’t a bad thing — and encour­ag­ing it does help keep the com­pa­ny’s costs down, which enables them to pro­vide an HMO to peo­ple who have to pay for their own insurance. 

    But hey — don’t go get­ting shot, ok?

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