Sounding Post…

Yes­ter­day I put a link up to an arti­cle that I found insane.  A four month old child, denied health care because of obe­sity.  Appar­ently falling above the 95^th per­centile on those annoy­ing lit­tle charts can make your child too much of a risk to insure.  The com­pany has now revised their deci­sion and the child will be cov­ered but this get­ting such atten­tion should make us all won­der who is get­ting denied and for what.

As I said, I put this link up on Face­book.  Only two peo­ple com­mented.  One was of the same mind­set I was, the other basi­cally said that insur­ance is a buis­ness and it’s their choice to insure or not.

Her argu­ment was well thought out to her I’m sure.  She didn’t seem heated or angry.  She was very clear on what she believed and why she believed insur­ance com­pa­nies have every right to deny whomever they like.

I wasn’t sur­prised by her opin­ion.  She is in my view incred­i­bly con­ser­v­a­tive, very much on the right wing of every issue I can even think of.  This is where I found some issues.

Here is a woman that is adamantly anti-choice from what I under­stand.  No abor­tion for any rea­son what-so-ever.  Every com­bi­na­tion of sperm and egg is an unborn child and deserves life.  She is fairly adamant about gov­ern­ment stay­ing out of your “lives”, taxes being too high and not want­ing to pay for any­thing that she deems “not the buis­ness of the government.”

These views seem as if they would be at odds with her stand­ing by this par­tic­u­lar deci­sion.  If a child of 6weeks old in the womb deserves to be pro­tected and cared for why doesn’t the one that is 4 months old?  If it would be wrong to abort a fetus that shows signs of severe birth defects why is it right to treat him so dif­fer­ently in the world of insurance?

I won­der if in her “gov­ern­ment stay out of my buis­ness” life she takes the taxes cred­its that her four chil­dren get her.  Does she take the health-care deduc­tion for the costs of her child with spe­cial needs?  Has she relied on char­i­ties that get gov­ern­ment help? Or in med­ical research that was paid for by gov­ern­ment grants? Or how about using Dr.‘s that had help from the gov­ern­ment in get­ting their education?

She made the point in her argu­ment that you wouldn’t expect a car insur­ance com­pany to insure a dri­ver that had acci­dents or drank.  She talked about how if you had 30 days to live you couldn’t expect to have a life insur­ance com­pany sell you a pol­icy. Pre-exisiting con­di­tions are the same to her, no mat­ter what the con­di­tion.  Insur­ance is a buis­ness and they can make their rules…well…so is pros­ti­tu­tion, pornog­ra­phy, tobacco, and alco­hol.  All busi­nesses, but all busi­nesses that I’m pretty sure she would feel need a lot of reg­u­la­tion and supervision.

That’s not what this is about though.  It’s about basic care.  She may have been able to care for her child’s non-covered ill­ness.  That’s won­der­ful.  But what if he doesn’t have the mil­i­tary salary in the future.  What if he doesn’t have the same kind of sup­port or oppor­tu­ni­ties.  I won­der if she would be so quick to defend the insur­ance com­pa­nies about not cov­er­ing her grand­child who is in the 96^th% for weight.

Tags: children, debate, health, health care debate, healthcare, human kindness, Life, parenting, poli, political views, politics, pre-existing condition, prorities