| The best way to protect yourself against a | | | | at all costs. It might be the less common of the |
| lawsuit from a health insurance company is to | | | | two types, but insurance companies will do their |
| know what types of activities are and are not | | | | best to put you in jail for a significant period of |
| considered fraud. Despite the treatment that | | | | time if they think that you are trying to |
| insurance companies often receive in movies and | | | | purposefully con them out of large amounts of |
| paperback novels, they are generally speaking, | | | | money. |
| not evil corporations who wish to steal from their | | | | Soft fraud is slightly more ambiguous but is |
| patients and badger their families; in fact most | | | | equally dangerous and surely worth your attention |
| coverage companies are of the tepid, modest, | | | | and aversion as well. It encompasses all those |
| entrepreneurial variety. However, if you break a | | | | acts of deceit where it cannot be proven that an |
| law, or if they think that you are guilty of | | | | individual willingly planned and executed maneuvers |
| insurance fraud, coverage companies will come | | | | to swindle an insurance company by means of an |
| after you viciously and prosecute you to the full | | | | elaborate scheme. This means that any time a |
| extent of the law. While it may seem | | | | policyholder lies about conditions in their home or |
| unnecessary from the laymen's point of view, | | | | the condition of an injury or accident, or |
| coverage companies use these aggressive tactics | | | | embellishes the extent of their claims, they are |
| to cut down on what amounts to hundreds of | | | | committing soft fraud. Oddly, policyholders are not |
| thousands of dollars in lost money for them each | | | | the most frequent abusers of soft deception |
| year in the form of fraudulent insurance activities. | | | | instead it is the health care providers themselves |
| Simply put, your best bet is to not be fraudulent, | | | | (the doctors and dentists) who tend to most |
| and the surest way of staying legal is by knowing | | | | often avail themselves of these fraudulent |
| the law. | | | | techniques, likely out of an engrained sense of |
| There are two types of insurance fraud: hard and | | | | duty and empathy to the patient. Regardless, one |
| soft. Hard fraud is roughly those acts that are | | | | should insist on the current charges and reporting |
| undertaken with the explicit intent of conning an | | | | of facts to ensure that one does not end up |
| insurance company, an insurer, or a health care | | | | being prosecuted for these types of charges. |
| provider. An example of this would be the classic | | | | Health insurance companies take such drastic |
| movie scenario of a person taking out an | | | | measures because of the substantial amounts of |
| expensive policy on an automobile, intentionally | | | | money that they lose each year to fraud. To |
| wrecking that automobile, and then attempting to | | | | avoid being an accidental or one-time fraud that |
| collect the coverage funds on that intentional | | | | ends up losing their money and livelihood thanks |
| wreck. While hard fraud tends to be rarer, it is | | | | to a court case, make sure that you know the |
| without a doubt an activity that should be avoided | | | | law and follow it at all times. |