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Heavy infant in Grand Junction denied health insurance
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| Parent(s) |
Issue
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| Contributor | RP |
| Last Edited | RP Oct 12, 2009 09:03am |
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| Category | General |
| Author | Nancy Lofholm |
| Media | Newspaper - Denver Post |
| News Date | Saturday, October 10, 2009 03:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | 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."
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." |
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