Quote:
Originally Posted by Who is the Drizzle?
I believe pre-existing conditions is when you have a condition and they won't let you buy new insurance. For example maybe you have a job and disease X. You lose your job and therefore insurance, and now you can't buy new insurance because you have disease X.
This is why it is not a great idea to go to the doctor if you do not have insurance, even if you are willing to pay; if he finds something bad, then you can't get insurance anymore.
On the other hand, I could see how this could be abused; why should a healthy person bother getting insurance until they get sick?
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It's not that they won't usually sell you insurance, it's that they will sell you insurance and specifically not cover your pre-existing condition. I had a stomach condition awhile ago, when I switched jobs, the insurer wouldn't cover anything that resulted from that condition until a certain amount of time had passed and nothing happened.
For a lot of people, their conditions are why they get insurance in the first place. As insurance is a profit-driven business, the company will not walk into a claim if it doesn't have to do so.
Other things are not covered either, depending upon your insurer. I know of a woman who had gastric bypass surgery and developed complications after the surgery. The insurance company would not cover any of the resulting complications because she elected to have the surgery done. So now she's had to pay over $300,000 in bills by herself.
If you treat health care like a commodity, and health insurance as a profit business, you're never going to drive down costs or have complete coverage for everyone for every condition. The incentive will always be for doctors and insurers to make the most money they can whether that helps the patient or not. That's not to say that this results in all doctors running up the bill or all insurers cutting coverage whenever they can, but it happens a lot and will continue to happen as long as we maintain the current system.