WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 (UPI) -- From Connecticut to California, owners of individual health insurance policies face the risk of seeing their plans amended or revoked without notice.
One of the little-recognized facts about individual policies is that even after being approved, they can be canceled or changed if the applicant hasn't provided proper information, USA Today reported.
Insurers sometimes are given as long as a decade to look back at a policyholder's records to check facts on the application.
In California more than 200 complaints about revocation of policies have been filed with the Department of Managed Health Care that is considering new regulations to deal with the problem of policy cancellations.
Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has asked the state's insurance commissioner to audit Assurant Health and consider penalties if it finds that insurer wrongfully revoked policies, USA Today said.
Blumenthal also proposed legislation that would require all insurers to prove applicants had intentionally lied about their health before policies could be revoked.
Insurers say they rarely revoke policies and generally do so only because of misleading or omitted information on applications.
