Somewhat OT: pre-existing

[Dave Wilton]

No, insurance companies rarely require an exam. They ask for your medical history, and if you tell them you suffer from anything, they deny you care. The condition doesn't have to be serious. A borderline-high cholesterol count or being five pounds overweight means you're uninsurable.

And if you develop a serious condition after joining the insurance plan, they'll spend lots of money investigating whether or not there is anything you didn't tell them (regardless of whether it's related to the condition you know suffer from) so they can cancel the policy and not pay for the care.


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Wilson Gray
Sent: Sunday, October 28, 2012 7:55 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Somewhat OT: pre-existing

I may be missing the point, but isn't it the case that you're required to undergo a physical exam and, if anything is found to be wrong with you, you can simply refused health insurance to begin with, because you have a "pre-existing condition."

In my own case, though it could be easily ascertained that I'd had glaucoma for at least a dozen years before I sought treatment for it, my current, ongoing, very-expensive treatment by an ophthalmological neurosurgeon is, nevertheless. beyond a fifteen-dollar copayment, fully covered by the Harvard University Health Service plan, even though I've retired.

OTOH, if my coverage by them had ended at my retirement and I then had to get my own insurance, my glaucoma would have become a "pre-existing condition" that no other insurer would have been required to cover except, essentially, at my own expense.
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-Wilson
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All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org