Centene Corp. has its plate full with nagging legal servings, and the latest headache confronting the giant insurer has to do with false advertising. In Ohio, the company faces a class-action lawsuit following complaints of policy features that failed to follow through on their fantastic promises. And at the center of this, another legal skirmish is Centene’s Ambetter brand.
The health plan offered in Ohio includes a feature component of in-house doctors. This kind of selling drew the attention of many customers, and why not. The ready availability of a network of medical professionals is hard to ignore, so they bought into the product. However, Ambetter failed to deliver and the cheated policyholders are up in arms. They want their money back and more.
Doctors Cannot Be Reached
The lawsuit claimed that contrary to Ambetter’s online advertising of a broad list of physicians ready to serve clients, the doctors were primarily unavailable. In most cases, the providers listed on the company’s website were hard to find or were in remote locations. And surprisingly for the latter, policyholders have been met with declarations of non-affiliation with Ambetter.
It was clear that the Centene product was selling things that were impossible to serve, and disgruntled buyers are not taking the fraud sitting down. It came as a shock that Centene would be part of a scheme that takes money from people and serve nothing.
Ambetter’s dubious list of in-network providers further came to light when several clients tried approaching the Nationwide Children’s Hospital. The institution refused to honor the health plan, thus confirming that the product is practically worthless. Contrary to what Ambetter claimed in pushing the product, doctors and other health providers listed in the program mainly were beyond reach.
The class suit is saying that Ambetter’s offering is both misleading and inaccurate. Customers who trusted the Centene product ended up utterly frustrated as they were made to make do with a depleted network of healthcare providers. It is understood that more dissatisfied Ambetter customers are poised to join the lawsuit, potentially making for a more substantial effort to bring Centene to justice.
Centene’s Unsavory History Of Misleading Or Mistreating People
The broken promise in Ohio is but the latest of the string of legal cases hounding Centene Corp and subsidiaries. In California and Arizona, the giant insurer is swamped by lawsuits that stemmed from its refusal to cover the healthcare bills claimed by behavioral treatment centers. Such action drove many mental care facilities out of business and left thousands of patients in limbo.
Reports indicated that Centene’s stunning and arbitrary rejection of payment claims was in reaction to the 2016 takeover of Health Net. It was initially thought to be an explosive business move that turned out to be a dud. And to cover up the costly mistake, healthcare providers and ordinary people were made to carry the bulk of the burden.
