Health Insurance Consumer Information

Aliza Marcus of Bloomberg.com reports on the case of Kendra Dyer, the Oklahoma girl whose private insurer decided to stop covering her care when she was 18 months old.

Karen Pollitz, director of the Health Policy Institute at Georgetown University is quoted in the story:

Our private insurance routinely fails people when they get sick … The market needs to be cleansed.

Fortunately for Kendra, Oklahoma has a state-funded high-risk pool that Kendra, now 6, is covered under. But only 34 states offer high-risk pools and few provide coverage to all who are eligible.

Does your state have a high-risk pool? Read our list of states which includes contact information for your state’s pool.

Are you about to lose coverage? Each state has different laws that apply to your ability to get and keep health insurance. Visit the front page of our website and click on your state on the map for a comprehensive free guide to your options in your state.

Are you in Oklahoma, like Kendra? Here’s our free Oklahoma guide.

Amy Harmon of the New York Times writes today about Congress’s overwhelming vote on May 1, for a bill that prohibits discrimination by health insurers and employers based on a person’s genes.

This Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act protects consumers and prevents insurance companies from using genetic information to deny benefits or raise premiums for individual policies, and prevents employers from hiring, firing or setting compensation based on genetic information.

The implications of this bill, should it become law, may continue to have a positive impact on the healthcare situation for all Americans. The story quotes Karen Pollitz, director of the Health Policy Institute at Georgetown University and head of the healthinsuranceinfo.net project:

“Ultimately unlocking all these genetic secrets will make the whole idea of private health insurance obsolete.”

Read the story online: Congress Passes Bill to Bar Bias Based on Genes, New York Times, May 2, 2008.

For more background information, Professor Pollitz’s 2007 paper, Genetic Discrimination in Health Insurance: Current Legal Protections and Industry Practices, from the journal Inquiry, is helpful.  You can order back copies from Inquiry via the link above.