GRAND JUNCTION Alex Lange is a chubby, dimpled, healthy and happy 4-month-old.
But in the cold, calculating numbered charts of insurance companies, he is fat. That's why he is being turned down for health insurance. And that's why he is a weighty symbol of a problem in the health care reform debate.
Insurance companies can turn down people with pre-existing conditions who aren't covered in a group health care plan.
Alex's pre-existing condition "obesity" makes him a financial risk. Health insurance reform measures are trying to do away with such denials that come from a process called "underwriting."
"If health care reform occurs, underwriting will go away. We do it because everybody else in the industry does it," said Dr. Doug Speedie, medical director at Rocky Mountain Health Plans, the company that turned down Alex.
By the numbers, Alex is in the 99th percentile for height and weight for babies his age. Insurers don't take babies above the 95th percentile, no matter how healthy they are otherwise.
"I could understand if we could control what he's eating. But he's 4 months old. He's breast-feeding. We can't put him on the Atkins diet or on a treadmill," joked his frustrated father, Bernie Lange, a part-time news anchor at KKCO-TV in Grand Junction. "There is just something absurd about denying an infant."
Bernie and Kelli Lange tried to get insurance for their growing family with Rocky Mountain Health Plans when their current insurer raised their rates 40 percent after Alex was born. They filled out the paperwork and awaited approval, figuring their family is young and healthy. But the broker who was helping them find new insurance called Thursday with news that shocked them.
" 'Your baby is too fat,' she told me," Bernie said.
This really hit home with me because I have 2 children who both were/are chubby babies, >95 percentile, breast fed only. Our doctor always proclaimed their weight a sign of GOOD health and predicted that as long as we kept up good eating habits that they would trim out in their toddler years and be better for it in the long run.
My son is now taller than all of his friends the same age as he is, has a balanced appetite as in incredible health. That being said, he is an active 3 year old and plays lots with other kids, falls down, and occasionally needs a doctors visit. I CANNOT imagine not being able to provide health care for my child because some money grubbing insurance underwriter trying to find any excuse to deny people coverage and especially for this reason!
I am not the biggest fan of the health care overhaul that is currently happening because I believe it is a bandaid on the real problem in this country. The real problem is that we ALLOW profit to be made off the blood of our neighbors. Someone is making money right now denying that baby coverage which will potentially deny him care in the case that poor fate might fall upon him. I am presuming that if his parents are struggling to find insurance they probably could not afford the cost of a childhood accident, or unexpected condition.
So we are basically telling these people, if your house is on fire we your neighbors will help you put it out by virture of our public fire system that we have instituted to keep us ALL safe. But if your body is on fire, we would rather see you die or go bankrupt or both because we need to protect the profits of giant corporation who do nothing more than exchange money.
And what is even most infuriating, is that the biggest opponents of reform are Republicans who also claim to be "pro-life". Damn them for being more concerned about this child as a fetus then they are now! Hypocrites!
Free for all please.
Edited by Jazzns, : No reason given.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. --Thomas Jefferson
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