For the millions of people losing their jobs and having to obtain health insurance on their own, they are in for quite some difficulty if they have a pre-existing condition. According to the Miami Herald:
[M]aterial available on the Web shows that people who have specific illnesses or use certain drugs can’t buy coverage.
”This is absolutely the standard way of doing business,” said Santiago Leon, a health insurance broker in Miami. Being denied for preexisting conditions is well known, but when a person sees the usually confidential list of automatic denials for himself, “that’s a eureka moment. That shows you how harsh the system is.” . . . .
Searching the Web, The Miami Herald found underwriting guidelines for Coventry Health Care, which owns Vista; Wellpoint; Assurant Health; and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska.
Among the health problems that the guides say should be rejected: diabetes, hepatitis C, multiple sclerosis, schizophrenia, quadriplegia, Parkinson’s disease and AIDS/HIV.
For cancer, the key is how patients have been doing in remission. Wellpoint, a national insurer, rejects applicants who have had breast or prostate cancer within the past five years. With other types of cancer, 10 years must have passed. Assurant Health, based in Milwaukee, rejects most patients whose cancer has not been in remission for at least eight years.
Other reasons for automatic denial by various companies: alcohol-related problems of people who have not been abstinent for at least six years, chronic bronchitis, severe migraines, and a cardiac pacemaker installed within the last two years.
Some insurers will automatically reject applicants who are using certain prescription drugs. Wellpoint denies anyone who within the past year has taken Abilify and Zyprexa for mental disorders as well as Neupogen, which is used to treat the side effects of chemotherapy. Vista lists the anticoagulant Warfarin and the pain medication Oxycontin. Both companies list insulin.
The article also discusses how the insurers use database companies to gather data about people’s medical conditions and prescription drug use:
To make sure that applicants are not lying, insurers hire a data-gathering service — Medical Information Bureau, Milliman’s Intelliscript or Ingenix Medpoint.
Intelliscript and Medpoint do computerized searches of a person’s drug use, gleaned from pharmacy benefits managers and other databases.
The difficulty is that if a person has a disease, then it may be nearly impossible for that person to obtain health insurance. My advice: (1) stay employed; (2) don’t get ill. Otherwise, you’re basically out of luck.
Originally Posted at Concurring Opinions
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This post was authored by Professor Daniel J. Solove, who through TeachPrivacy develops computer-based privacy training, data security training, HIPAA training, and many other forms of awareness training on privacy and security topics. Professor Solove also posts at his blog at LinkedIn. His blog has more than 1 million followers.
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