Pre Existing Conditions
Pre- Existing Conditions in Healthcare
By: Jennifer Sicher
October 19, 2012
HCS/455
Elaine Bobo
Healthcare has many policies and many things may change at any given time. In fact individuals with pre-existing conditions have a hard time finding insurance that will be willing to insure them. I find this to be a great topic for that matter. Disease and bad health in some cases may be something that you just can’t help or control. For example, a young woman has been diagnosed with kidney failure and is need of having a kidney transplant. A kidney transplant is an expensive and dangerous procedure. For this young woman after the transplant had been completed she had then been denied coverage through that insurer which left her with $1500 worth of prescription medications that she was now responsible to pay out of pocket for because she could not receive coverage from any insurers. Pre-existing conditions can cause debt and potentially harm an individual because they cannot afford to pay the costs of care. For long periods of time this is what patients had to deal with. There has been a change made where the insurer can refuse to cover any costs that are associated with previous pre-existing conditions, but still agree to cover the patient for other health matters. I find this topic intriguing because you never know if you could one day be diagnosed with something that may cause a life changing event including loosing insurance coverage. This can happen to anyone and in some ways I think that it is not fair because it is not anyone’s fault it just happens. I have also seen articles for life insurance where they do not want to provide insurance to those who smoke cigarettes. Even though the individual wants to buy coverage and can afford it the insurer finds that individual to be a liability which leads to the denial of coverage. This is definitely an interesting subject when it comes to healthcare policy because times have changed from the first example
By: Jennifer Sicher
October 19, 2012
HCS/455
Elaine Bobo
Healthcare has many policies and many things may change at any given time. In fact individuals with pre-existing conditions have a hard time finding insurance that will be willing to insure them. I find this to be a great topic for that matter. Disease and bad health in some cases may be something that you just can’t help or control. For example, a young woman has been diagnosed with kidney failure and is need of having a kidney transplant. A kidney transplant is an expensive and dangerous procedure. For this young woman after the transplant had been completed she had then been denied coverage through that insurer which left her with $1500 worth of prescription medications that she was now responsible to pay out of pocket for because she could not receive coverage from any insurers. Pre-existing conditions can cause debt and potentially harm an individual because they cannot afford to pay the costs of care. For long periods of time this is what patients had to deal with. There has been a change made where the insurer can refuse to cover any costs that are associated with previous pre-existing conditions, but still agree to cover the patient for other health matters. I find this topic intriguing because you never know if you could one day be diagnosed with something that may cause a life changing event including loosing insurance coverage. This can happen to anyone and in some ways I think that it is not fair because it is not anyone’s fault it just happens. I have also seen articles for life insurance where they do not want to provide insurance to those who smoke cigarettes. Even though the individual wants to buy coverage and can afford it the insurer finds that individual to be a liability which leads to the denial of coverage. This is definitely an interesting subject when it comes to healthcare policy because times have changed from the first example
References: 1. www.nytimes.com/Pre-existingcondition 2. www.kff.org