Wednesday, July 25, 2007
By STEPHANIE RICE, Columbian Staff Writer

http://www.columbian.com/news/localNews/07252007news173400.cfm

A Clark County Superior Court jury has ordered Kaiser Permanente to pay $4.5 million to a Vancouver woman whose late husband’s brain tumor went misdiagnosed for several years.

Craig Pozzi, an artist who taught photography at Clark College, died Nov. 12, 2004. He was 61.

Doctors testified during the two-week trial that if Pozzi’s tumor had been diagnosed in 1994, when he first sought treatment, he could have lived 15 to 25 years.

Instead, he was told by doctors he was experiencing panic attacks and given a prescription for Paxil, which is often used to treat anxiety and depression.

mirrored  for historical purposes at:

http://nwnews.kaiserpapers.info/pozzi.html

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National Health Insurers Face Federal Lawsuits

By Karen Pallarito

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Some of the nation's largest managed care companies are the target of a new round of federal lawsuits for their alleged failure to disclose financial incentives to deny or limit medical care services.

On June 22, Kaiser Permanente was named a defendant in a class action lawsuit accusing the Oakland, California-based health insurer of breaching its duty to fully disclose how it makes treatment decisions. The suit, filed in federal court in Tacoma, Washington, charges the health plan with violating the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), the federal law governing health benefit plans.

http://legalstuff.kaiserpapers.info/lawsuits/washington/year2000.html

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