It depends on how ‘pre-existing condition’ is defined.
Suppose you have a bit of tendonitis in your ankle, and fail to disclose it. Then, ten years later, you can get a brain tumor, and they will deny you coverage because you failed to disclose your ankle problem.
Nearly everyone has some minor health issues.
American Health Insurance Denied to Obummer for Pre-Existing Kenyan Condition [born in Africa] besides being a Moron
If people want to set up something on a prepaid basis, like an annuity that will pay out from the interest from a trust fund, or amortize that trust fund over a period of years with a decreasing balance until the fund is fully expended, that is an entirely different financial instrument from “insurance”, which is a bet you make with the insurance company on a continuing basis, that a certain set of circumstances WILL happen, and the insurance company is betting it WON’T happen.
In the long run, insurance companies are profitable, using this formula.
I want insurance for pre-crashed cars then I could buy junkers for $500 and turn them into new cars, its only FAIR.
Wouldn’t it make sense to charge a premium for a pre-existing condition, based on typical future costs for such a condition?
Oh, that is what the market WAS doing, until liberals tampered with the formula.
Now, we ALL will have to pay for other people’s pre-existing conditions, regardless of cause.
So why take care of yourself? Why exercise? Why have protected sex?
Any diseases you get and need to be treated will be cost-shared with the rest of the nation.
bookmarked for argument ammo.
These programs are essentially risk pools with identifiable participants, predictable (actuarially) costs and predictable benefits, and the "insurance" companies serve as the administrators, taking a cut for their efforts. When the participants and covered reimbursements are increased, the insurance companies must pass along the costs to participants.
Legal requirements in the auto insurance industry (minimum cverage) have obviously increased some costs, but open competititon amongst insurers have allowed premiums to remain manageable, even for risky drivers, and auto insurers remain profitable. Auto repair businesses had to get more efficient and cost effective to keep gettng collision repair business.
These same things would happen in the health care industry, if they were ever given a chance. Tort reform might help, too, although I believe the high med mal premiums have helped weed out many bad doctors.
I agree there is an issue with someone choosing not to buy health insurance and then signing up for health insurance and expecting a pre-existing condition to be paid.
However, consider another very real situation. An employee and his employer have paid health insurance premiums for over 20 years. The employee is diagnosed with cancer, is treated, and the cancer is in remission. The employer then has a “downsizing” resulting in the employee losing his job. The employee signs up for COBRA and pays the full health care premium for 18 months, the limit of COBRA coverage. The former employee has been unable to find a new job and must now move to an individual health policy but is unable to purchase one that will cover his “prexisting” cancer. Notice here, the individual has paid into the system. The problem becomes being forced to change policies due to the law limiting Cobra coverage to 18 months, not to any unwillingness of the employee to pay. In this instance the current system fails the individual while under a single payer system there would have been no issue.
I’m not in favor of a single payer government health care system, I just wanted to point out the fact that some people who pay into the current system are adversely impacted by pre-existing conditions even when they’ve played by the rules.
How can something be in a "condition" before it was in that "condition"?
They should be saying "existing condition". As in, "We won't insure anyone that comes to us with an 'existing condition'!"
My wife just said something that I haven’t thought of. What about people who are forced to get insurance but they can’t afford the co-pay or the charges they’ll get in the mail later on that the insurance didn’t pay?
And believe me, forced treatment is just around the corner.
I have a number of health problems I won’t go into. I have insurance despite my pre-existing conditions for which I pay a handsome premium. The coverage was awarded to me as part of COBRA from my last job (I was able to convert my group coverage to individual coverage). The coverage is not what I had when I was employed, but it’s fair. The coverage pays 80% after deductibles and with co-pays. Considering that I could have wound up with no insurance, I can’t complain.
Now when Obama Death Care takes effect and insurers will be required to cover everyone with pre-existing conditions, what will happen to my coverage? As far as I know, there is no provision in the HCR law that sets premium prices or levels of coverage. So...faced with having to cover so many more risks, will the insurance companies raise my premiums (and maybe yours also) and/or provide reduced coverage to us with pre-existing conditions? Will my insurance premiums double or triple and/or will my coverage be at, say, 40% instead of 80%? Seems to me that with all that extra risk, the insurance companies, in order to stay afloat, are going to have to do something to offset the losses they will sustain by insuring the infirm.
There is also this notion that government should be able to tell private industry how and with whom to do business. Someone want to tell me where in the Constitution is government allowed to dictate to business?
As you will see, to force an insurer to provide coverage for a condition that pre-existed the beginning of the coverage, is to force the insurer to provide something that is not "insurance" as that term is presently defined in California, and probably in every other jurisdiction.
This is exactly the logical flaw in the Healthcare Bill we have previously alluded to. And the using the term "chaos" by this author is a very accurate way to describe what this Bill evokes. Thank you AJFavish.
Over and over at the Suntrade Institute we have declared how truly stupid (arrogant?) the Harvard crowd (Obama, Sunstein, Summers, etc) is, and this is a perfect example. The Bill is simply not understandable in terms of insurance. Like really absurd.
There are those who say of course it is not stupidity but rather evil. We can't say, but we are looking at a true long term mess.
A pertinent observation is that the majority of US voting adults really do understand in a vague, inarticulated way, what a boondoggle this thing is. But as routine, the Media is the enemy here, since they also refuse or are incapable of articulating the fraud. Of course the same could also be said of Barack Obama himself, but noooo, guilt and emotion had their way.
Harvard - Henry Gates, Barack Obama, Jenifer G- what's her name, Timothy Leary, Teddy Kennedy, Michael Bloomberg, etc. Such is the way of the Left.
God help us.
Johnny Suintrade
(1) Individual insurance against major health care costs is often unavailable. Since insurers avoid insuring even healthy people who have pre-existing conditions that might in any way dispose them to such costs, this puts a substantial slice of the population out of the individual health insurance market. The remedy is to foster a national individual insurance market for those with pre-exisiting conditions. Subsidies and assigned risk pools can be created for those who are still unable to obtain insurance.
(2) The current system provides a grim answer for anyone with financially catastrophic health care costs that are not covered by insurance: go into bankruptcy to clear away existing debts, quit working, go on disability, and use Medicaid to pay health care costs. Do we really want a system that leaves people with quitting work and becoming a burden to the public as their best choice?
(3) Employer provided health insurance is tax deductible, so such insurance tends to get loaded up with routine health care costs. This skews public expectations about the nature and role of health care insurance. The remedy is to tax employer provided and individual insurance the same, with a break for out of pocket payments and for payments made through Health Savings Accounts.
(4) The American health care system discourages competition and consumer choice on price. Worse, prices are set in a crazy fashion in which the big buyer -- government in the form of the Medicare and Medicaid programs -- demands price breaks that shift costs to private insurance and to anyone who pays out of pocket. The uninsured thus pay the most. The remedy is to introduce price disclosure and price competition. This will help to lower costs and reduce inefficiencies in health care.
(5) State and federal mandates drive up health care costs and health insurance premiums. The remedy is to drop as many of the mandates as possible and to permit health insurers to do business across state lines.
In sum, conservatives need to engage the issue in a thoughtful fashion. Liberals won't, so someone has to. If we do so, we can win the health care debate. Echoing insurance industry talking points though is a dead end.
It's like being allowed to bet on the Superbowl after the game.