Rape Victim's Choice: Risk AIDS or forgoe insurance

[sybylla]

Christina Turner feared that she might have been sexually assaulted after two men slipped her a knockout drug. She thought she was taking proper precautions when her doctor prescribed a month's worth of anti-AIDS medicine.

Only later did she learn that she had made herself all but uninsurable.

Turner had let the men buy her drinks at a bar in Fort Lauderdale. The next thing she knew, she said, she was lying on a roadside with cuts and bruises that indicated she had been raped. She never developed an HIV infection. But months later, when she lost her health insurance and sought new coverage, she ran into a problem.

Turner, 45, who used to be a health insurance underwriter herself, said the insurance companies examined her health records. Even after she explained the assault, the insurers would not sell her a policy because the HIV medication raised too many health questions. They told her they might reconsider in three or more years if she could prove that she was still AIDS-free.

<snip>

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/21/insurance-companies-rape-_n_328708.html

[Rage for Order]

1. The irony here is palpable

I wonder how many people Ms. "used to be a health insurance underwriter" denied coverage to for possibly having a pre-existing condition?

[DemBones DemBones]

4. Yeah, let's say it was her fault because

she used to be an insurance writer. Want to say it was her fault she was raped because she drank with men in a bar?

[Rage for Order]

7. I didn't say the rape was her fault

And certainly I'm sympathetic to the fact that she was raped, and the men who did it should be in prison for a very long time. However, the focus of the piece is the difficulty she now has in obtaining medical insurance. She used to make her living denying coverage to people who were in similar positions to the one in which she now finds herself. Her complaining about being denied coverage is akin to Angelo Mozillo complaining that he was the victim of a predatory lender.

[DemBones DemBones]

10. Somehow I think Angelo Mozillo screwed more people AND

made more money doing so than any peon working for an insurance company ever did.

If she *liked* denying people coverage, she'd still be working that job, wouldn't she?

So I think we should give her a break on her pre-existing job, and it should be illegal to deny insurance to rape victims.

[MNDemNY]

2. "raped" yet again.

Sen Bachus? are you proud of your "good friends'?

[DemBones DemBones]

3. She didn't report the rape? (Yes, I'm too lazy to click the link!)

I would hope an insurance company wouldn't deny coverage to someone who reported a rape, with all the crap that entails, and then was prescribed an AIDS drug.

I would really hope it wouldn't matter whether she reported it or not but that's probably too much to ask for in the Age of Misogyny.

Depressing story, either way.

[Posteritatis]

5. Of course an insurance company would deny in that situation

They drop coverage for abused spouses or children - domestic abuse is a pre-existing condition - and something like this is in the same general realm of vile, so it's not a big leap for them.

The article doesn't make it clear whether she reported it or not, but her insurance company deduced that she'd been raped from the medical records and said they weren't going to cover her for at least the next three years because of it.

[laughingliberal]

6. In an industry which considers domestic violence a preexisting condition...

reporting the rape would probably have been cause enough not to insure her even without the HIV meds.

[BrklynLiberal]

8. O. MI. GAWD!!!!!

:wow:

[foxfeet]

9. They might as well deny coverage to anyone who has had unprotected sex

and who has never been tested for HIV.