The Complexities of Medical Health Insurance Coverage
While the health insurance coverage available from private insurance companies in the United States provides access to high quality medical insurance, there are no "rights" in place that mandate that insurance providers carry all those that apply. In other words, a medical health insurance policy may be denied to an individual who is considered high risk as a result of a pre-existing medical condition.
This can occur when a person has a serious condition that requires continual medical care such as heart disease, HIV and cancer. The reason that medical health insurance providers avoid insuring such individuals is obvious: they would be knowingly signing an individual to pay $5,000 a year in coverage and the individual would immediately receive payouts of insurance coverage that would greatly exceed what the insurance company is receiving.
While it may seem somewhat cruel on the surface to be denied coverage, the reality of the situation is that if insurance providers placed themselves in a position to lose money, there would be no insurance providers.
Instances of Mandated Medical Health Insurance Coverage
One thing that needs to be understood is that medical coverage is not a constitutional right. As such, the ability to compel medical health insurance coverage must be deliberately enacted by federal law (which it is not) or by state law which is handled on a state by state basis. For example, in the state of California there is a program known as Hippa coverage.
What Hippa basically states is that under certain conditions (when COBRA benefits expire, for example) is that insurance providers are mandated to accept people for insurance coverage provided the high risk individual pays a higher premium. While this may sound like the perfect program on paper, it is also problematic. One medical health insurance provider in California was fined a million dollars for cancelling insurance policies without true cause so as to cut losses.
As one can see, there is no easy answer to the issue of medical health insurance coverage and for those who are considered high risk applicants will have a difficult time finding a provider willing to approve them. This does not mean, however, the ability to be approved for coverage is an impossibility as there are certain states that have rules in place designed to help people in such situations. As such, it becomes important to consult the laws of your state in order to ascertain whether or not approval for coverage is mandated.
