Run For Coverage.

If you don't think that the for-profit health care system in the United States needs reform, you probably don't have a preexisting medical condition.

I do, and so does Maggie Yount.

From David Lazarus in the Los Angeles Times:

San Marcos resident Maggie Yount wasn't surprised when the letter from insurance giant Anthem Blue Cross arrived the other day. Yet she couldn't help but be frustrated.
"Some medical conditions, either alone or in combination with the cost of medication, present uncertain medical underwriting risks," Anthem informed her. "In view of these risks, we find we are unable to offer you enrollment at this time."

In other words, no health coverage for you.

Yount, 24, finds herself in that cloudy area in which a "preexisting condition" makes her too great a risk in the eyes of money-minded insurance companies. And so she's being excluded from the system.
"It looks like I'll just have to be very, very careful about everything," Yount told me. "But what kind of way is that to live your life?"

Great question.

Read the rest here.

Pre-Existentialism.

    Health care reform naysayers routinely attempt to shoot down reform advocates with the disjointed argument that the United States has the best doctors, which isn't the issue. Those of us who can attest firsthand to the huge gaps in the patchwork of U.S. health care are not critical of the doctors; we are pointing at the system--or lack thereof--within which the doctors work. It's that system which is dysfunctional, and to obscure that fact with disingenuous distractions does everyone a disservice. 

     From the New York Times: 

    Insurance executives held out hope to the afflicted late last month by announcing their willingness to end a notorious industry practice: charging higher premiums to people with health problems or denying them coverage altogether.

     But don’t breathe easy just yet. The change, promised at a Senate hearing, would hinge on the condition that Congress in turn require everyone in the land to carry health insurance. And Congress is still at least months away from taking up major health legislation.

      So for now, consumers with pre-existing medical conditions must continue the struggle to obtain and keep medical coverage.

     “It is arguably the biggest minefield out there when it comes to getting and keeping your health insurance,” said Karen Pollitz, project director at the Health Policy Institute at Georgetown University. “Under the current system, the people who need insurance most can’t afford or can’t get coverage.”

     The rest is here. Click here to sign a petition for a public health insurance option.