Mental reservations and health insurance

[Grayton]

Is it morally acceptable to use a “mental reservation” to try to have your health insurance company pay for a costly medical test? If your doctor wants you to have the test for preventive medicine purposes, but your insurance company will only pay for it if the doctor indicates that you have been experiencing pain then would it be moral for the doctor to write that on a request for the test? And would it be moral for the patient to acknowledge having felt some pain to the medical personnel who administer the test?

Would it be moral to use the concept of “mental reservation” in this circumstance? Could one say “I have experienced some pain” while really meaning “Yes, I feel a little pain now and then, but nothing to really complain about”?

 

[space_ghost]

Grayton:

Is it morally acceptable to use a “mental reservation” to try to have your health insurance company pay for a costly medical test? If your doctor wants you to have the test for preventive medicine purposes, but your insurance company will only pay for it if the doctor indicates that you have been experiencing pain then would it be moral for the doctor to write that on a request for the test? And would it be moral for the patient to acknowledge having felt some pain to the medical personnel who administer the test?

Would it be moral to use the concept of “mental reservation” in this circumstance? Could one say “I have experienced some pain” while really meaning “Yes, I feel a little pain now and then, but nothing to really complain about”?

it depends upon your definition of FRAUD!

 

[Charles]

I think by asking the question you already know what the answer is. If the test is for preventative purposes, then that is what should be reported to the insurance company. As the previous post stated, if you are telling them something which is not true in order to get money out of them, you are committing a crime.

 

[Grayton]

My very strong sense is that it is not morally permissible.

However, Father Edward Healy, Professor of Moral Theology at West Baden College wrote about examples of the permissible use of a “mental reservation” that seem to me to be the same as the question I posed.

In his 1943 book, “Moral Guidance”, for example, he wrote that it is morally permissible to evade paying customs duty when you drive across the border with thousands of dollars worth of taxable goods, by responding “No” when the customs agent asks you, “Do you have anything to declare?”

Father Healy wrote that by saying, “no” you mean “I have no dutiable goods that I wish to reveal for taxation. It may be that I have such goods. I need not expose them to your view. It is your duty to discover them.”

Father Healy does add that one must “beware of scandal” in this situation.

Is this considered morally correct by modern orthodox Catholics?