Opinion: Coverage of pre-existing condition ‘sets daughter free’
March 29th, 2010
Columnist Dan Kennedy, writing in the [UK] Guardian, says the health care bill liberates tens of millions of Americans like his daughter who have what insurance companies call pre-existing conditions. Kennedy’s 17-year-old daughter Becky was diagnosed at birth with achondroplasia, a genetic condition that is the most common form of dwarfism.
The bill, he writes, will prohibit insurance companies from denying benefits to people with pre-existing conditions. The effect of those regulations, Kennedy says, will be to “release … pent-up entrepreneurialism,” allowing people to launch businesses or join start-up companies without fear of losing their insurance coverage. An excerpt:
Maybe an accountant who’s recovered from cancer wants to try his hand at consulting. Maybe a mother with an autistic child has a killer idea for a restaurant. Maybe a wheelchair-using lawyer at a large firm would like to hang out her own shingle. Now there’s nothing to stop them.
Related column by Dan Kennedy: Wiping out human variation. Kennedy worries that a new test allowing people to see if they have “preventable genetic diseases” encourages the elimination of human diversity. An excerpt:
… what if we had been told we were at risk of having a child with a “preventable genetic disease”? What would we have done? I’d like to think the answer would have been “nothing”, but who knows? In 1992, we could at least feel secure in the knowledge that there wasn’t anything to be done.
In 2010, and in the years and decades to come, we will not only be able to do something, but I fear we will be expected to do something as well. It’s a chilling prospect, and one we haven’t even begun to talk about. The time to start talking is now.
Dan Kennedy is an assistant professor of journalism at Northeastern University in Boston.
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March 31st, 2010 at 9:10 am
There are children today who are denied coverage. There are families who have gone bankrupt and lost their homes because they can’t pay the medical bills that have piled up from a sick child. There are people now who have to turn down a raise and a promotion to move to another company becaue they know their child with a pre-existing condition will not be covered if they switch policies. Where were all of you then?
March 30th, 2010 at 9:15 am
My comment relates to the second part of this report, “preventing” a genetic condition. Maybe it’s just semantics, but the genetic change we’re talking about has already occured when it is detected. We can’t “prevent” that. What we are talking about “preventing” is the life of that child with whatever challenges may or may not be a part of that life. We can “prevent” birth, but we can’t “prevent” genetic changes. Let’s call it what it is.
The expectation to “prevent” that birth is already well established in our society, and with universal prenatal testing no one will be able to say they didn’t know. I thank God every day I didn’t know. At least at that time (25 years ago)I wasn’t expected to know.
March 29th, 2010 at 5:42 pm
I am the mother of a 22year old young man with Down syndrome who also has autism and does not talk. Please be aware that people with disabilities are going to be pushed aside if this new health care bill stays around. I’m worried about death panels for my son since he does not talk will he be murdered? since he cannot defend himself. We as parents also have to worry about what happens when our children age will there be health care for them. I’m very worried.