{"id":6457,"date":"2016-11-08T17:42:58","date_gmt":"2016-11-08T23:42:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=6457"},"modified":"2016-11-08T17:42:58","modified_gmt":"2016-11-08T23:42:58","slug":"is-private-justice-just-ctd-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2016\/11\/08\/is-private-justice-just-ctd-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Private Justice Just?, Ctd"},"content":{"rendered":"

For NPR<\/b><\/i>, April Dembosky reports <\/a>on another infringement<\/a> on the right to sue, but this time this is being applied in the health insurance market – Sutter Health<\/b><\/i>‘s contract with companies removes the right to sue the company by the company or the employees:<\/p>\n

San Francisco Bay Area companies say Sutter Health<\/a> is strong-arming them into a contract that would help the hospital system secure its power over prices and potentially raise the cost of medical care for their employees in the future.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Dozens of companies have received a letter, via their insurance administrators, asking them to waive their rights to sue Sutter. If they don’t, a fact sheet<\/a>included in the letter says, the companies’ employees who get care through Sutter’s network of hospitals, doctors and medical services will no longer have access to discounted in-network prices.<\/p>\n

“In both choices, Castlight and our employees lose,” says Jennifer Chaloemtiarana<\/a>, general counsel for Castlight Health<\/a>, a tech company in San Francisco that received one of these letters this spring. She thought it was strange.<\/p>\n

Castlight is self-insured, meaning it hires an insurance company \u2014 in this case, Anthem Blue Cross \u2014 to manage the administrative details of its health coverage. But when an employee gets sick, Castlight pays the bill, not Anthem. Anthem basically functions as a middleman, including negotiating discounted prices with providers like Sutter.<\/p>\n