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Big Health Insurance to Sick Kids: Suffer
It didn’t take long for Big Insurance to look for loopholes in the health care reform law. Just days after it was signed by President Obama, insurance companies are trying to weasel out of provisions designed to end the abuse and outrageous practices the insurance industry has inflicted on consumers and patients for years.
Sick kids are their first target.
Starting Sept. 23, the bill will ban insurance companies from denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions. But as The New York Times reports this morning, insurance lawyers are claiming the bill’s “fine print” allows them to refuse to cover children with pre-existing conditions such as asthma, diabetes, orthopedic problems, birth defects and other illnesses.
That claim is “outrageous,” says Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.).
The ink has not yet dried on the health care reform bill, and already some deplorable health insurance companies are trying to duck away from covering children with pre-existing conditions. This is outrageous.
The new law says insurance companies “may not impose any pre-existing condition exclusion” in their policies covering children under age 19. The insurance companies assert the law only requires coverage for pre-existing conditions if a policy is sold and that it does not require access to a policy. In other words, insurance companies claim they can deny coverage for an entire family if one child is sick. Says Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.):
The concept that insurance companies would even seek to deny children coverage exemplifies why we fought for this reform.
U.S. Department o fHealth and Human Services (HHS) spokesman Nick Papas told Kaiser Health News:
The law is clear: Insurance plans that cover children cannot deny coverage to a child because he or she has a pre-existing condition. To ensure that there is no ambiguity on this point, the Secretary of HHS is preparing to issue regulations next month making it clear that the term “pre-existing exclusion” applies to both a child’s access to a plan and to his or her benefits once he or she is in the plan.
But you can bet the insurance company and their lawyers will fight every step of the way.
Click here to find out more about what the new health care reform law will do for you and your family.
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2 Comments
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“But you can bet the insurance company and their lawyers will fight every step of the way.”
No kidding? Gee Whiz! ….. Duh!!!
The corporations will forever be fighting in the courts and in Congress with amendments to the “Health Care Reform” fighting for every buck it can get.
Thus it was, and is, still imperative to eliminate these crooks out of the people’s health care system.
Medicare for all “single-payer” legislation will need to be introduced again next year.
Perhaps the crooks who passed this corrupt legislation will be defeated in November 2010 or “retire” with their loot. They can take up jobs as lobbyists as a payoff for their votes.
Read and weep!
Published on Monday, March 29, 2010 by the Associated Press
Big Pharma Wins Big With Health Care Reform Bill
http://www.commondreams.org/
….
Pharmaceutical interests spent $188 million lobbying last year, more than all but a handful of industry sectors, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. They employed an army of 1,105 lobbyists.
And after years of funneling most of its campaign contributions to Republicans, the industry has favored Democrats with 56 percent of the $5 million it has handed candidates so far this year. The biggest recipient, by far, of the industry’s 2008 election cycle contributions of $13.8 million was Obama, who received $1.2 million for his presidential campaign.