Can Having a C-Section Make You Dangerous To Insure?
June 1, 2008
The Columbus Dispatch has an article in today’s paper about a woman that was denied insurance by Golden Rule Insurance Company because she had given birth through a C-Section.
She was turned down because she had given birth by Caesarean section. Having the operation once increases the odds that it will be performed again, and if she became pregnant and needed another Caesarean, Golden Rule did not want to pay for it. A letter from the company explained that if she had been sterilized after the Caesarean, or if she were older than 40 and had given birth two or more years before applying, she might have qualified for coverage.
Robertson had been shopping for a better rate on individual health insurance. After being rejected by Golden Rule, she kept her existing coverage.
This is simply unbelievable. What would these insurance companies prefer, killing the baby or mother? In my mind, this is more reason for the government to get involved in health care.
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We’ve gotten ourselves (predictably) in a bizzaro world with this hybrid public/private health system of ours, haven’t we?
As a free market type, I’d like to see patients fully exposed to their health care costs, and get to make the choice whether to insure for the risk of a massively expensive treatment, or die. I suspect that the lack of exposure to this financial risk is what causes many of us (like me) to be middle aged, obese and a burden on the system. I’d go so far as to say we let this lack of financial risk place the ultimate burden on society - the cost of treating our final illness.
A friend of mine who is one of the country’s healthcare finance experts told me that something like 80% of our lifetime medical care costs will be spent on the final illness, which by definition is a battle we will lose. Seems like the ultimate selfishness to me. Aren’t we consuming resources that should be preserved for our children and grandchildren?
But if we’re not going to have a free-market system, then perhaps we need a fully nationalized system. But note that in countries with such systems, the same kind of value choices are made, but by someone else. In the UK for example, the wealthy get their healthcare from private physicians - using their money to get what they want, when they want. Joe Commoner has to live with the public health system, which might be pretty good, but you might have to wait years for a knee replacement or a coronary artery bypass.
Not everyone gets an equal break in life, and it’s incredibly expensive and ultimately ineffective to try to fix that.