Healthcare Reform: It's the morality, stupid.

[Are_grits_groceries]

One of the centerpieces of health care reform is the prohibition of discrimination by insurers on the basis of a patient’s medical history. The Washington Post reports that “cherry picking” healthy patients—without actually denying coverage to the sick for pre-existing conditions—is one way for the insurance industry to get around proposed new restrictions that may become law.

One mode of driving away the chronically ill would be a policy of deliberately delaying payment of insurance claims—which obviously matters more when you have more medical expenses.

In the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof tells the story of a family in which a father with a rare genetic kidney disease was dying in the absence of a kidney transplant. Two adult sons wanted to donate a kidney, but family doctors advised them not to get tested to see if they were a match because, if the test showed they had inherited their father’s mutant gene, they would be unable to get health insurance in the future.

These stories both provide down-to-earth examples of why a fundamental change in our health care system is a moral as well as a financial imperative. Why has it proved so difficult for advocates of real reform, including President Obama, to convey the profoundly moral nature of this issue to the public? That’s not a rhetorical question.

I genuinely don’t understand why ordinary people—few of whom make it through adulthood without having at least one sick family member or friend suffer from the inequities of our present system—seem largely unmoved by the moral dimensions of this issue.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/community/groups/index.html?plckForumPage=ForumDiscussion&plckDiscussionId=Cat%3aa70e3396-6663-4a8d-ba19-e44939d3c44fForum%3a7cceb09e-a8ae-44b4-b7af-92605cbce240Discussion%3a5d5a6fd0-b569-48c3-9e14-4d9cf8d7a3f6?hpid=talkbox1

I don't understand either.

[Wapsie B]

1. Insurance companies want that genetic testing information in the worst way.

Problem is even if someone appears as healthy as an astronaut one bad genetic marker and in the eyes of the health insurance industry it's sorry Charlie. Some people will not understand this until it directly affects them.

[Turbineguy]

2. Allowing insurance companies to get in the way of science.

Actually, I'd like to know what markers I have. Perhaps with some minor lifestyle changes I could lead a happier and longer life.

A happier and longer life would mean I would pay premiums longer and use less benefits but that would not show up on next quarter's balance sheet.

You are going right to the core of the problem. The morality of making other suffer so some can make more money.