Aislin Bates: The Real Reason She was Denied Health Insurance
Aislin Bates is by all accounts a healthy, active 2 year old who was denied health insurance by United Health Care for being too small. She weighs 22 pounds which is in the third percentile for children her age. Her father was dumbfounded stating:
“It seems as if they’re discriminating about the fact that she’s smaller, that her size is an issue,. I don’t see why that would be a factor in whether or not a child is healthy.”
Although the parents expressed disbelief about the rejection, I am sure they understand the real reason for this denial. It’s more than likely that Aislin parent’s will request growth hormone therapy which comes out to about $20,000 per year and total treatment costs can easily tally up to over $100,000.
Aislin will be a big “expense” for United Health Care and there is no way they will ever cover the costs for this type of therapy from health care premiums. Let’s face it, the insurance companies are in the business of making money, not securing your health and this and similar cases makes this abundantly clear. Here’s yet another reason we absolutely need a government run public insurance option as part of Obama’s health care overhaul. Otherwise, all a health care overall will do is enrich the coffers of the very insurance companies that are making health decisions based on profit and loss calculations.
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“It’s more than likely that Aislin parent’s will request growth hormone therapy which comes out to about $20,000 per year and total treatment costs can easily tally up to over $100,000.” What? My son has always fluctuated between the 5th percentile and actually falling off the bottom of the chart. I would never consider hormone therapy – he’s a perfectly healthy child with twice the energy than his “normal” weight classmates. Did you know that the weight charts in this country are based on current averages and therefore they have been going up? How can we consider this healthy? What used to be “normal” is now “underweight.” Unless Aislin is low energy she should be allowed to continue what for her is obviously a normal weight.
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I agree with your points, but the insurance company is looking at their bottom line. The unspoken “conversation” involves the insurance company not wanting to foot the bill for future growth hormone costs.
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Disgusting. The name of the company is “Golden Rule.” Look at CEO Rich Collins’ statement before the Committee On Energy And Commerce, which states, “Our company mission is to improve the health and well being of all americans.” His company’s mission is to protect his bottom line. As for requesting growth hormones, it wouldn’t matter if that child had no arms and legs and needed lifetime care, in fact, she would need insurance more if that were the case. This argument has nothing to do with the insurance company’s fears for their bottom line, it has to do with basic humanity and the loss of a sense that we are in things together, the megalith company dictating the rights of everyone in its path, with the audacity to name itself after something biblical, and not even the sense to abide by that God-given rule. It’s a disgrace.
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Agreed! That’s why we need a government run public health care insurance option. – and you can bet your bottom dollar the insurance companies are doing everything they can to kill this.
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And, in keeping with the fact that they were humiliated in front of the world, the company has in fact, reversed its decision. It is important that people take a stand on issues like this and it is quite clear that this has nothing to do with growth hormones. The company’s instant reversal has to do with public image, which, again, is the thing that governs their bottom line. It’s good they changed, and sad they were forced into it not by common decency (one would assume), not by empathy or by reason, but by their bottom line, which would have been and is probably now adversely affected by their inhumane decision process, made public on television. It’s that publicity they are protecting, not any one person on their roster of clients, or, shall we say, members, because the insured are never treated as clients, but as members of some club they are imminently in danger of being kicked out of. It really doesn’t matter why someone is denied coverage, it’s the denial that we’re talking about here, it’s fencing out our own, in this country, that leads to every man for himself, and a business model that promulgates this way of behaving, and that cannot reasonably continue.
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Also, there was no medical evidence of failure to thrive, and I heard no discussion of a Sprue test. Without evidence of this failure, I do not concur with your positing a future request for growth hormone as some underlying issue. Even with evidence of Sprue or some other issue, treatment would first consist of parenteral nutrition, not growth hormones.
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Insurance companies are like gambling houses that assess their risk on “games of chance.” .. and the odds for growth hormone therapy are higher for Aislin because of her short stature. That’s what the insurance company is looking at right now… probabilities about future immediate health care costs and with Aislin they don’t have “house odds.”
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Bizarre, and simply a corporate ideology of running risk assessment based on stats rather than individual cases, i.e. if we did this for you we have to do this for everyone-simply put, this country is too big to be run like a well-managed socialist empire-not sure there is one anyway-and its capitalist ventures have overrun its human ideals. It’s a serious problem.
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This seems to only affect the self-employed. If Mr. Bates obtains health coverage through an employer, he will not face this issue.
That’s why it is so crucial for those with preconditions, such as allergies and diabetes, to become employed even if it means working for McDonalds. Without an employer, people with preconditions cannot obtain health insurance otherwise.
I have heard that morbidly obese is now considered a “precondition”.
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