Kaiser Agrees to Settle Patient Dumping Class Action Lawsuit

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A Kaiser class action lawsuit over allegations that the insurance company required disabled patients with psychiatric problems to cancel their insurance plans has been settled.

According to the Kaiser patient dumping class action, the insurance carrier regularly forced psychiatric patients with disabilities to close out health insurance plans so that the patients would be moved into public facilities instead.

The Kaiser patient dumping class action lawsuit settlement includes a Class of patients formerly insured by Kaiser. Those patients who were forced into ending their coverage will now be able to enroll again in a Kaiser health plan.

As part of the settlement, the insurance company will also issue notices to therapists, discharge planners, case members, social workers, and mental health doctors about when patients with caregivers should be allowed to transfer into a residential and locked psychiatric facility. The purpose of the notice is to reduce some of the confusion likely created by the former policy.

The Kaiser patient dumping class action lawsuit was originally filed by lead plaintiff Douglas Kerr in 2014. The same day that the lawsuit was filed over allegations of illegal patient dumping, Kaiser stopped their appeal with the California Department of Managed Health Care over claims that patients did not have appropriate access to mental health care through the existing plans.

The Kaiser patient dumping class action lawsuit said that the insurance carrier purposefully tried to evade costs using the transfer of disabled psychiatric patients.

When a mentally ill patient was transferred to a new facility because of a canceled healthcare plan, public programs including Medicaid and Medicare covered the costs.

According to the Kaiser patient dumping class action lawsuit, however, these actions by Kaiser violated anti-fraud laws, the anti-discrimination law in California, and the Unruh Civil Rights Act.

The parties in that lawsuit officially entered mediation in 2017 before they reached a settlement in May 2018.

The Kaiser patient dumping class action lawsuit settlement covers Class Members who were former plan holders for conservator disabled patients who had a mental health disorder diagnosis but had to cancel those plans at Kaiser’s demand.

Those impacted patients were transferred to a non-Kaiser facility where public programs footed the bill instead. Class Members included in the lawsuit must have gone through this situation between Sept. 9, 2010, and July 24, 2018.

Although the settlement has been reached in that Kaiser patient dumping class action lawsuit, the defendants still allege that they never forced anyone to cancel coverage and instead argues that decisions to cancel coverage would have fallen under the powers of the court-appointed conservator.

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The proposed Class in the Kaiser patient dumping class action lawsuit is represented by Kathryn Trepinski of the Law Offices of Kathryn Trepinski and Lisa S. Kantor and J. David Oswalt of Kantor & Kantor LLP.

The Kaiser Patient Dumping Class Action Lawsuit is Douglas Kerr, et al. v. Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc., et al., Case No. BC556863, in the Superior Court of California for the County of Los Angeles.