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Do you support classification of obesity, smoking, and high cholesterol as acceptable pre-exisiting conditions for health insurance?
MSNBC is reporting on a Wahington Post story about wellness initiative language in the Senate health care bills that allow for increased premiums and decreased benefits to employees and their dependents if they do not meet a "wellness" standard. Employers and Insurance companies support the measure, employees and medical advocacy groups (American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society, and the American Diabetes Association), oppose it. Do you support or oppose this? Is it discrimination or good sense? Does it have the best interest of the employees at heart, or the best interest of the employer and the insurance companies? Is this best practice or big loophole?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33336289/ns/politics-washington_post/
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33336289/ns/politics-washington_post/
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October 17, 2009 03:59 AM
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If we're ever required to purchase medical insurance, I'll probably become a criminal. I have so many pre-existing conditions with three autoimmune diseases that I'll never be able to afford it.
Smoking isn't a medical condition, so I don't consider it pre-existing. Living in a smoggy city makes me more 'at risk' as does driving more in a car than most people. Those aren't pre-existing.
I know some overweight people who have better BP, cholesterol and triglycerides, blood sugar and pulses than my mother, who is a tiny little petite thing. Being overweight does NOT automatically mean you are sick, and for many, it doesn't really increase your risk of getting sick.
High cholesterol isn't necessarily a sign of heart disease.
Having the flu doesn't mean you'll get AIDS, even though they are both viruses.
I guess the thing here for me is this: pre-existing only lasts for a short time anyway, and then they jack up prices so you can't afford the insurance, or where it's really cheaper to pay for medical yourself, but then people don't get the care they need, and there's a huge gap in the middle--too rich to get welfare, too poor to pay out of pocket.
It's a gap I pretty much have falling into in the past.
If insurance becomes 'mandatory', then there better be some type of risk pool for those who have medical expenses and health issues and cannot afford to spend hundred of dollars per month on insurance that won't cover anything that's preexisting anyway.
Smoking isn't a medical condition, so I don't consider it pre-existing. Living in a smoggy city makes me more 'at risk' as does driving more in a car than most people. Those aren't pre-existing.
I know some overweight people who have better BP, cholesterol and triglycerides, blood sugar and pulses than my mother, who is a tiny little petite thing. Being overweight does NOT automatically mean you are sick, and for many, it doesn't really increase your risk of getting sick.
High cholesterol isn't necessarily a sign of heart disease.
Having the flu doesn't mean you'll get AIDS, even though they are both viruses.
I guess the thing here for me is this: pre-existing only lasts for a short time anyway, and then they jack up prices so you can't afford the insurance, or where it's really cheaper to pay for medical yourself, but then people don't get the care they need, and there's a huge gap in the middle--too rich to get welfare, too poor to pay out of pocket.
It's a gap I pretty much have falling into in the past.
If insurance becomes 'mandatory', then there better be some type of risk pool for those who have medical expenses and health issues and cannot afford to spend hundred of dollars per month on insurance that won't cover anything that's preexisting anyway.
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October 16, 2009 10:48 PM
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There should be no acceptable pre-existing conditions for health insurance, especially if laws require we all purchase it.
A company being paid to provide health coverage shouldn't be allowed, as they are currently, to pick and choose who they will accept.
They are, after all, in the business of helping people avoid financial devastation associated with medical treatment.
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A company being paid to provide health coverage shouldn't be allowed, as they are currently, to pick and choose who they will accept.
They are, after all, in the business of helping people avoid financial devastation associated with medical treatment.
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October 17, 2009 04:47 AM
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No because cholesterol levels are not accurate indicators of health. In his book The Cholesterol Myths, Dr. Uffe Ravnskov tells us what happens to an older woman who has normal high serum cholesterol levels. When her blood is tested in a forced cholesterol checkup, the cholesterol myth is used to justify treatment of her nonexistent disease state and she loses her vibrant state of good health. Check out Uffe Ravnskov's work or Dr. Mary Enig to find out more about how we NEED cholesterol to be healthy!
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October 17, 2009 06:24 AM
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No. That defeats the point of health insurance, which is to take away stress over access to the real need for health care when someone is sick, by tipping it so that only people who don't need it get it.
On a sociological level, the main benefit of universal health insurance is that citizens are more productive when they don't fret about getting sick, and, because they don't stress so much, they don't get sick as much, so overall, it actually cuts down the cost of health care on a national level, such that the cost of dealing with sickness from bad health habits is more than compensated for by the reduction in cost of overall health care.
Someone did a study in France. The French drink a lot of wine and eat a lot of high fat, high cholesterol food, and they smoke a lot, yet their rates of hospital-grade sickness is lower than the US, and some people thought it must be something in the wine (for which the jury is still out, by the way, but if true, then if someone wants to push for premiums tiered according to lifestyle, then they had better be ready to give premium reductions to certifiable winos) but in the end, the study concluded that their better health was mostly the result of not feeling so much stress about wondering what would happen if they got sick.
That means, those guys who are pushing for tiered health care premiums are adding to stress, which is adding to the eventual *need* for health care *because* of the stress, which means *their policy* is a factor that would have to drive up premiums on tiered health care premiums.
In other words... what they're saying is, "You must pay higher premiums for things that will increase the chances that you will get sick, which includes high cholesterol, being overweight, smoking, and worrying about being able to afford higher health care premiums".
That internal contradiction obliterates their position in the hands of a good lawyer before a rational judge.
So, no.... they can't. It's inhuman, it's a trick to try and slip around the purpose of universal health care, which is universal access, it ignores the fact that reduced cost of health care by universalism covers costs of sickness from high cholesterol and being overweight and smoking, *and* it is logically self-contradictory.
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On a sociological level, the main benefit of universal health insurance is that citizens are more productive when they don't fret about getting sick, and, because they don't stress so much, they don't get sick as much, so overall, it actually cuts down the cost of health care on a national level, such that the cost of dealing with sickness from bad health habits is more than compensated for by the reduction in cost of overall health care.
Someone did a study in France. The French drink a lot of wine and eat a lot of high fat, high cholesterol food, and they smoke a lot, yet their rates of hospital-grade sickness is lower than the US, and some people thought it must be something in the wine (for which the jury is still out, by the way, but if true, then if someone wants to push for premiums tiered according to lifestyle, then they had better be ready to give premium reductions to certifiable winos) but in the end, the study concluded that their better health was mostly the result of not feeling so much stress about wondering what would happen if they got sick.
That means, those guys who are pushing for tiered health care premiums are adding to stress, which is adding to the eventual *need* for health care *because* of the stress, which means *their policy* is a factor that would have to drive up premiums on tiered health care premiums.
In other words... what they're saying is, "You must pay higher premiums for things that will increase the chances that you will get sick, which includes high cholesterol, being overweight, smoking, and worrying about being able to afford higher health care premiums".
That internal contradiction obliterates their position in the hands of a good lawyer before a rational judge.
So, no.... they can't. It's inhuman, it's a trick to try and slip around the purpose of universal health care, which is universal access, it ignores the fact that reduced cost of health care by universalism covers costs of sickness from high cholesterol and being overweight and smoking, *and* it is logically self-contradictory.
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October 18, 2009 12:15 AM
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oppose this? Yes i oppose any thing to do with this and only want the best health care for any one in the work place or home and this is like saying lets not treat the small people only the big or treat the smart people not the not so smart so no i do not want any thing like this to happen for any of the people in the USA
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