Alabama congressman: “People who lead good lives” don’t have preexisting conditions

[Benton]

(05-03-2017, 05:55 PM)Dill Wrote: My daughter developed leukemia when she was 4 1/2 years old. She was cured in a German hospital. Now she is 35 years old. A brush with cancer like that is what insurers have labeled a "pre-existing condition" for decades. Jimmy Kimmel's son's heart valve condition would be another example.  If your parents and your brother died of cancer, that would put you, for insurers, in a higher risk pool no matter how great your life-style choices were.

If the good Representative from Alabama wants us talking about how life-style choices create a pre-existing conditions, I think it is to moralize medical issues to the point enough people feel comfortable moving back to the old system, which excluded those with pre-existing conditions or charged them prohibitively high premiums. "Personal responsibility"=greater profitability if people can be blamed for their conditions. People who don't have pre-existing conditions--or none that they know of yet--then come to see those with pre-existing conditions as the "problem"--not the Freedom Caucus and insurance companies.

This could be a new variation on the cookie joke: An insurance company CEO, a healthy client, and a client with a pre-existing condition are all sitting around a table upon which sits a dish with 12 cookies. The CEO grabs 11 cookies, then leans over to the healthy client and whispers "Watch out! that sickie wants half your cookie."

By the way, German insurance, for middle and lower income earners, is coop--perhaps one reason why healthcare there is half the cost per capita and just as good. How is it that they cover everyone for everything--even smokers--without seeing their costs "skyrocket"?

I think a coop would fix a lot of our problems. Or at least step in that direction without totally abandoning insurance and medical providers' free market right to possibly make you give up everything you have or die. If people still wanted to take advantage of that model-- as lawmakers assure us they will -- them they can. For those that want cheaper coverage, they can coop.