To the best of my understanding, that’s only something to worry about if you have self-coverage. If you’re employed at a company that has health insurance coverage, then pre-existing conditions are not an issue.
Ferret, to change insurance would mean going to all new doctors and hospitals in that network, right in the middle of critical care, that alone would be a reason not to consider that.
Why do you assume the insurance company isn’t trying to get out of paying the bills? The insurance company is the only party here with a motivation to deny care, and in this case it’s a big motivation with lots of dollar signs attached.
Why are you assuming these bills are being denied due to a lack of information?
Except that the parents in the OP are not irresponsible and did nothing to trigger this problem. The purpose of insurance is (or at least it used to be) to cover you for unforeseen/unanticipated disasters. This is certainly one. One again, you completely fail to understand the purpose of insurance.
Since we don’t know, specifically, what is wrong with the child in question there is no way to know what the odds are of a “decent life”. It could be the child requires some very expensive operations but once they are done the problem is fixed and the child will require no more additional care above and beyond the norm. Or the child might require constant, chronic care. We don’t know. As usual, curlcoast, you assume the absolute worst case scenario. Of course, you tend to do that even when the facts contradict your imaginings, so why would a lack of facts stop you?
Why do you force the taxpayers to pay for your monthly disability check? That’s what always amazes me - so are so quick to condemn people on any kind of public benefit, or even those who cost a private insurance company money, yet every month you accept a government check without batting an eyelash. You are one amazing hypocrite.
Not necessarily. Many insurance companies cover the same hospitals/medical centers. It would be a disruption but perhaps not as big of one as you might think.
At any rate, casdave seemed to be speaking in the general sense, what with the talk about shackling the labor force to their current jobs, etc., rather than about this specific case.
Would you mind listing what you do consider “rights”?
Are government services that benefit some portion of the populace but paid for by all taxpayers limited to “rights” only?
When I was in graduate school in the US, we were required to take the insurance chosen by the university, which changed every year. Every year the new insurer rejected any claim that could be considered linked to a pre-existing condition, including but not limited to diabetes, pregnancy and childbirth.
Maybe it counted as self-coverage even though we could neither choose another supplier nor generally opt out of that one. I know one person who was allowed to opt out, as his Canadian insurance was considered adequate; mine wasn’t, because its description of covering “everything that’s considered non-elective in Spain” wasn’t detailed enough (the whole insurance policy took only two pages).
It seems to be the policy of American insurers to always reject every claim. I had a couple, and both times a phone call managed to get it approved, but holy shit what a pain in the ass!
And I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who don’t believe gimps like you should be allowed to suck sweet, sweet tax dollars out of the Government’s tit. Will you be repaying Uncle Sam in deference to their wishes, or will you just launch headlong into several dozen posts stuffed with avoidance, non sequiturs and special pleading like you usually do and hope everyone just forgets about your staggering hypocrisy?
First of all, we’re not talking about an “it”, we’re talking about a human being. It is considered rude, even in cases of ambiguous gender, to refer to a person as an “it”. Of course, it does make it easier to kill a human being when you refer to that person as an “it”, perhaps that is one of the reasons that calling someone an “it” is offensive.
Second, refusal to treat a medical problem in a newborn can be grounds for criminal neglect charges. Indeed, medical personnel have been prosecuted for doing precisely that. The law forbids hospitals from withholding treatment based solely on ability to pay, which is basically what you’re proposing here. So you’re asking the medical team to risk criminal prosecution in this scenario.
Third, the “no one need feel bad about whatever happens” TOTALLY ignores the fact that the parents involved will have their child die. They are going to feel bad about this, no two ways about it.
Fourth - childbirth costs more than an abortion. So it’s still going to cost somebody money.
So… I fail to see how this “solution” is in any way “elegant”.
Nope, that is not how it works.
The rules are a bit complicated, but yes, the pre-existing clause can nab you even through employer coverage.
I think you mean conservatives conveniently forget this. I’m a liberal, and I have mentioned the same issue a few times here. It’s one of the arguments I use to support my position that UHC is good for the economy.
As it is now, there are people who are virtual slaves to their jobs because they cannot change jobs without losing health insurance.
That’s what we do, and we’re far from wealthy. The HSA/catastrophic insurance combo is entirely affordable, and allows you to be in total control of your health care spending. It’s not for everyone, but works great for the average, healthy family. And it is cheaper for us than our employer-offered insurance, which didn’t cover what we needed anyway.
I’m no libertarian zealot, but it does no good to ignore that there are affordable ways to maintain your healthcare spending and protect yourself from a medical bill tragedy.
God doesn’t understand the US healthcare system. It’s too complicated.
That’s correct. The pre-existing clause works as follows:
Say you have insurance through your employer. Due to these trying economic times, you are laid off. For any number of reasons, you can’t afford COBRA coverage (where you pay the full premium - which is generally much higher than individual coverage), and/or can’t afford to immediately pick up an individual policy. You are out of work (or not eligible for coverage thru your new employer) for 63 days (or longer). When you DO get coverage, you will have fallen into the pre-existng condition clause, and your new policy doesn’t have to pay SHIT for 12 months.
That’s how the pre-existing clause works.
(I am a medical biller with 10+ years of experience.)
That is what is so nice about my solution, even if the parents do not believe at all, it still allows the child to live if God wanted, really a win win deal. Meanwhile no one goes broke either nor do relatives and such have an abortion to look down on. Even if the couple likes abortion, I bet they have relatives that won’t.
By having the baby and just providing normal care like say the baby would have gotten 50 years ago you can say you did try, and that the baby was just not viable. By the way a late term abortion like was suggested since not legal here would also NOT be covered by insurance either. A normal delivery in the covered hospital is the way to go in all respects, there is no downside to doing that.
Just let me know when and where the riot is going to be.
I’ll be there.
Unless I’m playing Halo online.
Or American Idol is on.
Or that one show with that hot chick. You know that one? Yeah man.
I think casdave meant libertarians, not liberals. I could be wrong, tho.
Your posts and your sig line are both jokes, right?
I never said that. My point was that many people would not prefer an ugly or disabled child given the choice. That isn’t to say there weren’t any beautiful people working on the UDHR or superathletes trying to ban child labor. It means that a person’s worth, effect on the world and identity doesn’t begin and end with short term emotional effects or social status. But I think that as we develop better and better fertility treatments and genetic tests, that is what parents are going to select for.
Ah, sorry, you see we don’t have this libertarian stuff, not in the right wing manner that you Americans have.
We do have a liberal party, but you lot would probably complain they are too socialist.
The name tags can be confusing, what you call left wing, it to us very right wing, Obama is not even slightly socialist, not by our standards, even historically we have not had anything as right wing as Obama, and as for the Bush lot - they are what we would describe as right wing nationalists - what we might regard as getting toward extemist.
So, yes I used the term wrongly, I meant Libertarian - I think, which is right wing to us.
Even so, if I were a business person, and I wanted labour market flexibility, I would do something about your healthcare system, I would make individuals pay through taxation rather than have companies pay for it through extortionate and hopelessly inefficient unregulated insurance systems.
This would take a direct burden from business, and make business start ups easier and more able to attract talent especially during the critical start up phase.
I imagine that UHC would actually cost more, there is likely to be a large unmet demand, however once implemented it would be unthinkable to get rid of it, and the actual increase would be cheaper per head of population that it is now.
If citizens want it, why should business carry the taxation burden, and why should they pay for the insurance?
Business does not directly benefit from medical insurance, and yet it pays the bills, its just an added direct cost - surely it should be paid through general taxation.
Yes if course the money ultimately does come from trade, but it seems to me to be huge burden on innovation and labour market flexibility.
The thing is, ‘Middle America’ sees taxation as ‘stealing’. Sure, we all want our infrastructure and services; but we don’t want to pay for them!
People say they’re better at handling money than the government. In reality, they’ll just spend the money on ATVs and big screen plasma TVs.