This, THIS is what is wrong with insurance today! When I read this story I was truly shocked. My son was a chunky jovial healthy baby, and he also was approximately 17 lbs at four months. Although the insurance company eventually acquiesced and covered the baby, that they even DARED to deny at all should outrage us all. Why should it require media attention for American citizens to obtain decent health care coverage.
112 Thoughts to “4 Month Old Baby DENIED Health Care Coverge”
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I agree Mando, most go by your body mass index (BMI). I’m in the ‘Overweight’ category according to my BMI but that doesn’t take into consideration that I’ve lifted weights for the past 15 years.
I agree about regulation to a point Moon, there can be over regulation. Isn’t that what contributed to the mortgage problem, forcing banks to lend to people that couldn’t afford it?
Also, not enough regulation is an issue as well, look at what a disaster deregulating electric companies was/is.
Mando,
Take this true story – a friend with Diabetes worked for a company that stopped paying the insurance premiums for their employees. The company subsequently went out of business and closed. He is now without a job, health insurance, AND has had an insurance lapse through no fault of his own. He is not employed right now, and cannot afford an individual policy. This could be you.
What is your solution to this true scenario?
Pat, wouldn’t your friend qualify for Medicaid? After all, he has no income and has a disablility: http://www.health.state.ny.us/health_care/medicaid/
From their site…
How do I know if I qualify for Medicaid?
You may be covered by Medicaid if:
– You have high medical bills.
– You receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI).
– You meet certain income, resource, age, or disability requirements.
Greed led to banks offering loans to people who couldn’t afford them, not govt. regulation. I think there were some incentives to lend to people who might not otherwise have qualified but….the flood waters that ensued the past 10 years has just been pure greed for the most part.
Go back to the savings and loan scandals–again, greed and profit. Nothing wrong with it at all until systems start failing and individuals are harmed.
Sorta like nothing wrong with hunting at all until carcasses are left out on plains with only ears and tongues missing and a species is near extinction.
No, he does not qualify for Medicaid, as his annual income for this year is still above poverty level. He will need to be unemployed for a while before this number is reduced.
I agree, greed played a part but regulations forcing banks to give loans to people who couldn’t afford them contributed in a big way. You can’t just dismiss that. I don’t want to get too far off topic here Moon but check out this:
“mortgage lenders didn’t wake up one fine day deciding to junk long-held standards of creditworthiness in order to make ill-advised loans to unqualified borrowers. It would be closer to the truth to say they woke up to find the government twisting their arms and demanding that they do so – or else.”
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/09/28/franks_fingerprints_are_all_over_the_financial_fiasco/
I know someone else who has a similar situation, Pat. I think the poverty has to be fairly long term poverty before any of the medicaid plans can be activated for individuals like this.
It truly is frightening. Equally frightening is the thought of too much government control (not to sound like Mando) in one’s personal business. I was just reading in the post about some of these new proposals that want to regulate every aspect of our lives.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/15/AR2009101503036.html?hpid=topnews
I haven’t dismissed the govt incentives at all. However, the or else piece you left is op ed and is someone’s opinion. I could find something that disclaimed it (another opinion) and we would be right back where we started.
There were Freddie and Fannie regulations that go back to the late 80s and 90s that try to include minorities and people with less income in the homeowner gene pool. However, there was more to the latest melt down than just the government inclusion of these people.
The government didn’t tell the banks and mortgage companies to package derivatives to help out poor people. I am saying there were many reasons for the fall. I am also saying that too much greed was probably the compelling force behind it. People want to make money. Nothing wrong with that until the bottom falls out.
@Pat
Is he eligible for COBRA?
Most people I know with diabetes are in horrible shape, have poor eating habits, drink, are overweight, smoke, and do not exercise. Not saying all forms of diabetes are preventable but definitely controllable with some self discipline.
I have a friend whom I love dearly. He’s very obese and has diabetes and sleep apnea because of that. If he lost his job and insurance, I’d give and do what I could to help him and so would his other friends, family, and church. The govt. should not be in the business of charity. That is our responsibility and choice.
“mortgage lenders didn’t wake up one fine day deciding to junk long-held standards of creditworthiness in order to make ill-advised loans to unqualified borrowers”
I think that were aggressive about this. TYhey knew that if it all went bad, as is always the case (such as the S&L scandal in the early 90’s) that the taxpayers would clean up the mess.
It was the lenders that lobbied members of Congress to allow Metricula Consular Cards as sufficient for home loans. Aggressively. And then jumped in and started lending to illegal aliens.
I remember when I canceled my Bank of America credit card, picking that one particularly because they were aggressive about marketing home loans to illegal aliens. I remember how dismissive the company representative was of me when I expolained that I was cancelling my account because they were irresponsibly loaning money to illegal aliens. Well I hope she lost her job when the chickens came home to roost on that one. Bank of America and Wells Fargo were particularly aggressive about marketing, in Spanish, home loans to illegal aliens.
Rick, that was a business decision–and one you obviously do not like. There was a market out there and the energetic went after it.
Congress didn’t set the rules for home loans. There might be some regulations that deal with lending for home loans but they were never regulated by congress. Where is this coming from?
I believe most banking and mortgage practices/regs are handled at the state level. State Corp Commission seems to ring a bell.
However, there is no way that the entire housing market nationally crashed because of illegal aliens. Not even close.
All I’ll add to Rick’s statement is the banking industry was and is the most heavily regulated industry in the US. All the regulation in the world is not going to prevent fraud committed on us by the politicians we vote into office.
As it should be. I would say there are some that are more heavily regulated. A relative owns a mutual fund company. He lives and breaths federal regulation.
If the banking industry is so heavily regulated, why are credit cards being allowed to up interest rate to good customers 3 times the original value?
Just a little interesting tidbit from 2003 I found googling:
Joined by members of Congress, Department of Housing and Urban Development secretary Mel Martinez launched national homeownership month, which will include a series of events aiming to expand homeownership opportunities to the underserved, as well as to all Americans.
Later this month, secretary Martinez will participate in an “Ask the White House” 30-minute online question-and-answer session in Spanish, open to the public, where participants can discuss homeownership issues concerning the Hispanic community. The first “Ask the White House” discussion was conducted in English last week, starting off the housing events.
“The Bush administration has joined forces with numerous private and nonprofit organizations in a collaborative effort to increase homeownership, particularly among minorities,” secretary Martinez …
While we are grousing, lets throw section 8 housing in, just for drill. A friend of mine’s sister, lets call her Milly, bought her dream home when her husband Tony retired. Beautiful lakeside property. I believe she paid over 400k in Florida for this house. Within a year, the foreclosures hit. Now she is surrounced with sectin 8 housing, crime, people sitting on sofas in their driveways, etc. Her dream home has turned into a a haunted house on Nightmare Lake. A third to a half of the homes are section 8. She is afraid to vacation because of the crime in the neighborhood.
How does this work and do we have neighborhoods in our area that are designated section 8?
Because they need C A S H. And they can do what they want. Don’t like it, take your business elsewhere. That’s what is beautiful about this country. CHOICE. At least we have some choice.
Interesting, Mando. No one is denying that Hispanics were involved in the crash. So were white folks, blacks, asians and middle easterners. Yes the government pushed minorities and poor people in to home ownership. I don’t know what all was involved because I am not poor or a minority…yet. However, plenty of non-poor, white people also got pinched in all of this. And, bankers, mortgage brokers etc didnt become fat cats why just saying no.
“do we have neighborhoods in our area that are designated section 8?”
I know there’s a Section 8 complex on Coverstone, just a block down from where the day laborers congregate. I’m sure many of them live there, subsidized by our tax dollars.
I know why they are doing it. Why are they being allowed to do it if they are so regulated? It isn’t mastercard and visa doing it, it is the banks using those cards.
In 2005 Congress stuck a provision into a spending bill – or maybe it was a defense bill – that allowed banks to use Matricula Consular Cards as ID, on all these Federally-backed loans. It’s hard to find a link to it but I’ll try.
As with many real, important things it’s barely known, barely understood, and no one is held accountable for it.
Meanwhile we all pay to bail out the companies who lended so aggressively based on it – http://apnews.myway.com/article/20091016/D9BC74KG0.html
“Bank of America’s global card services unit loss widened significantly to $1.04 billion from $167 million a year ago.
The loss in the bank’s home loans and insurance division grew to $1.6 billion from $54 million a year ago, as credit costs continued to rise.
The bank, which being investigated by federal authorities for its Merrill acquisition, has received $45 billion in bailout funds as part of the Treasury Departments $700 billion financial rescue package. It’s not known when it will repay the government.”
And I don’t mind those kinds of complexes being designated as section 8. I mind when they go into middle class plus neighborhoods and knock the property values out the window.
I asked how this happened and I was told that the property owners are renting the houses out for like `1/3 of the value but that they have guaranteed income from HUD.
In 2003 Congress pushed back a bill to restrict use of these cards for loans – here’s the roll call :
http://www.americanpatrol.com/REFERENCE/ShamRollCall-HR1950-030715.html
Conbress deliberately chose to allow use of those cards – which are very easy to forge – for Federally-subsidized bank loans, circa 2003 and 2004. despite reports like this one – http://digital.library.unt.edu/govdocs/crs/permalink/meta-crs-5028:1
This is the kind of thing that Bush and Vincente Fox would talk about when they lunched together. Now we the people are paying that lunch bill.
Mando,
no, COBRA is not an option. COBRA is where the company still has an insurance plan in place, and you pay your share of the cost of the insurance – since this company let the plan default and went out of business, there is no plan in place to pay the COBRA to.
Many of the Financial industry woes can be traced back to companies like Enron and Worldcom, where wall street desires and states what a companies revenues should be, based on their assumptions. The companies then try whatever they can do to meet those assumptions however unrealistic they are. The Financial Industry do not create anything of value, they just move money around.
Why shouldn’t they be allowed to do it? The banks jacking up interest rates want your cash. They need to improve their financial statements and they need your cash to do it. There are other banks out there wanting to buy your debt and will entice you with low rates to do so. Switch.
If you lend out money and find yourself in a dire financial situation, you start knocking on doors and making phone calls to get your money back. Banks do the same but in a different manner.
BAC is one of the large banks that is in better shape than some.
Its earnings report was not so hot though. More. See video.
http://www.gurufocus.com/news.php?id=71937
Wasn’t there just major credit card legislation that regulated the gouging practices of credit card companies?
They prey on consumers.
Enron and Worldcom is a different monster then the mortgage collapse. Their accountants were way smarter then the regulators and they took advantage of that.
The financial industry does create value. They provide the avenue for individuals and industry to invest. For one thing, without them, there’d be no insurance industry. It’s all intertwined like one big organism. Its the heart and arteries that pump and distribute the blood.
Rick, not being a doubting Thomas but what does Congress have to do with US banks accepting Matricula Consular cards as proof of ID?
Price gouging is a buzz word for sleazy politicians on a white horse out for your vote.
As long as consumers have choice, there can be no gouging. Low rate cards are still being offered. There is no monopoly in the banking industry.
“what does Congress have to do with US banks accepting Matricula Consular cards as proof of ID”
As part of the Homeland Security debate, Congress definedthe set of identification criteria necessary to take out a loan or get a credit card. You can’t do it without ANY ID, or with an Al Quaida membership card. You can, though, do it with one of the millions of easily-forged, unverifiable “Matricula Consular Cards” circulating.
Mando,
I know of several middle class families that simply got in over their heads and ended up in forclosure, non were minorities.
And I know of 10 of 25 houses on my block that were illegal flophouses 3 years ago, ALL foreclosed.
Homeland Security, Treasury, the people entrusted with our national and financial security, told Congress that this was a bad idea. However, those are cabinet agencies and do not hire lobbyists.
The banking industry, which hires lobbyists and gives away billions in direct and indirect kickbacks and favors, thought it would be a good idea.
Guess who won the arguement.
Very sad example of many peoples’ situation Pat. I feel for this person. In a civilzed society health should be available for those struggling in the middle. You shouldn’t HAVE to poverty level to get health coverage, that serves no ones best interest.
I got an up-close oook at what was happening next door to me.
The woman who bought the house, the one I saw bartering with a realtor – never saw her again.
Whether she is the (I’ll withold the name) listed as property owner, I don’t know. Quite likely not as I understand it. Houses were being taken out in all kinds of family members’ names.
When the police wanted to speak to the house’s owner, one of the women in the house, who spoke little or no English, claimed that she was the owner.
There were at least 10 people in this 3-bedroom house, and subsequently a realtor told me that the basement had been subdivided into cubes, ransacked, and was “disgusting”. The house was sold for $130,000 or so at auction. At the height of the boom my neighbor had sold it to (name redacted) for $370,000. The house one door over, which had never been a flophouse, sold for about $250,000 at about the same time as the $130,000 sale.
Great to know that we the people are eating that $200,000 difference.
Or $100,000 difference, or something like that.
Excellent credit can turn into average credit overnight with credits cut back. A consumer can be playing by the rules and have the rug pulled out from under them. Most of us don’t need to know a congressman to know that credit card companies prey on people.
Rick, you are familiar with hispanic foreclosures. Other people in different locations might find an entirely different group of people in foreclosure. Nationally speaking, many people in foreclosure are NOT Hispanic.
Enron and Worldcom are very similar to what happened at the banks. Off Balance sheet money loosing hedge funds is the same thing as enron off balance sheet entities.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2008/07/wither-citigroups-11-trillion-of-off.html
http://www.rense.com/general19/enronhero.htm
The accountants were able to outsmart the regulators so that they could do what they wanted.
And just how many of the foreclosures involved illegal immigrants? No one can tell us. We should know. Our government should know, or attempt to find out.
Hi Rick… keep in mind that some of those same lobbyist ended up in Obama’s administration.
The most notable is Mark Patterson, chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, was registered to lobby as recently as last year for financial giant Goldman Sachs.
Indeed. Business as usual. But with a different face, a different “marketing campaign” on the box.
Priority #1 got done – we transferred billions in capital from ourselves to the bankers, and propped up the stock market to an unnatural degree. There was bipratisan consensus on that, and neither Barack Obama nor anybody else sought to slow that down with mundane matters. Having acheived that, we can now move on to pantomime concern about “health care” and the other “issues of the day” that the two parties jockey around for positioning within.
Abortion is happily polarized – the GOP draws lots of votes on it, as do the Democrats. They’re both happy to change absolutely nothing on it and pretend to be locked in some struggle with the other. Same has become true of the immigration issue. It’s in a static state. Democrats like it there – it draws them more votes than they lose (though they lost mine), and it keeps the GOP off-balance as they have trouble getting their more conservative or ideological members to toe the party line.
@ Rick
Support the Libertarian Party. Lots of wackos but their platform is sound.
When it comes to immigration Rick… does it suprise you that Cecillia Munoz, now Director of Intergovernmental Affairs was a lobbyist for the National Council of La Raza? Want to see something scary, take a look at how many big labor union lobbyist (mostly from the SEIU) are now running the Department of Labor… I’m just sayin…
Hello, tell me what you think it means to be a lobbyist with….(fill in the blanks.)
Rick, you don’t even know that the owner of the houses in question around you were illegal immigrants. How does one find out something like that. I don’t know if the homeowner next door to me is an illegal immigrant. No way to find out. He isn’t the person listed on the deed unless he has undergone a sex change operation.
Rick, I have to disagree that the govt propped up the stock market. The stock market wallowed in self pity until March, then it pulled (or bulled) itself up by its bootstraps and trudged on, fairly nicely.
I am not even sure how the govt would prop up the stock market if it wanted to. Not sure how that would work.
Today wasn’t so great. A lot of earnings reports came out and it was Friday. Good week, barely under 10,000 for the Dow, so there was some sell off today also. There is still a lot of money out there…people have been afraid to jump back in. Interest rates are so low that there is very little difference in a savings account and putting your money in a hole in the backyard or under your mattress.
Hi Moon, I know what your getting at and I have already agreed with you. The term ‘lobbyist’ can include a wide variety of people. However, it’s not just one here or one there, it’s several here and several more there. And trust me, it’s not just union lobbyist, it’s union bosses as well.
Do you consider big labor (SEIU, AFL-CIO, etc…) to be special interest groups? If you do then you to should be alarmed by how many SEIU, AFL-CIO and other union lobbyist AND bosses are now in this administration. Especially since Obama is on video at an SEIU meeting telling them that the first consults with SEIU management before making decisions on health care or immigration.
Just who is running the show here? Us or special interest groups (aka big labor)? With the volume of union lobbyist and bosses now members of this administration I think we all know the answer.
Exhibit A of how the SEUI is now running DC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQj-xBH30-I
also Moon, to somehow suggest that some of these union lobbyist are not ‘lobbyist’ is laughable…
This should all be taken care of once Obamacare kicks in. There has never, in the history of this nation, been any sort of travesty caused by government mistakes or mindless government drones adhering to formulas or guidelines. Couldn’t happen! Government has always been the most compassionate, efficient, and noble institution! Oh, it’ll be grand!!