But I was wondering if anyone had a comment on this: Getting Beaten by Your Husband Is an Excuse to Deny Coverage.

Apologies if someone already went over this; I haven't been able to scour the boards to find it.

To my eye, this is an outlying issue--not because it's unimportant, but because I can't imagine it comes up all that much (or perhaps that's simply what I'd like to believe). If anything, it simply speaks to the absurdity of "pre-existing conditions," and that they're considered at all. Life is a pre-existing condition, one that will inevitably fall to sickness and end in death.

I'd be curious to hear any thoughts.

... as a thought, but the list of states that allow this behaviour seems to exhibit a kind of consistancy?

From your link;

"UPDATE: The eight states that still allow it are Idaho, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Wyoming, according to a report by the National Women's Law Center."

as a former abused spouse, I'm not objective on this matter. Luckily I live in New York, where the definition of pre-existing conditions isn't left to the imagination, or how often it comes up, because it's illegal.

I was mad that Baucus wrote up a bill that would allow insurance companies to take 13% of our income as our health insurance premium. Then I looked at my pay stub, and i'm already paying about 12%.

. . . if I opened any wounds. And though I suggested that this was peripheral, on balance, to the whole healthcare debate, I hope you understand that I think it's appalling.

I was mad that Baucus wrote up a bill that would allow insurance companies to take 13% of our income as our health insurance premium. Then I looked at my pay stub, and i'm already paying about 12%.

Good point, and well taken.

So sorry about your former abused spouse marriage.

Hope they got those who raised you into such an affair as well!

thank god for layered laws to protect all PTSD Abused femal spouses including the current re amended Parental Rights Acts of biden which also allows not just Hate Crimes to pass with Abused women's rights as well. but it also includes foreign born spouses of POTUS passage as well. This is H>J res 42--

Not to worry about gang of six Baucus Acts AMericorp is now A National military force in gear to patrol all out nations Gates Tenure educational town hall programs and Census redistciting to keep apallacians(sp) from crossing the border to abuse city folk--

hmm

best regards

lmg

In a sense it is a relevant pre-existing condition, but one that should not be considered applicable as a matter of policy, or at worst one that could alter the nature or price of the coverage. Denial of coverage period is despicable here. Removal of the P-EC concept altogether in certain types of public-subsidized catastrophic coverage plans is appropriate.

Outlying? Perhaps. Unless you happen to be in an abusive relationship. It's a horrible idea to make this a pre-existing condition that would/could allow an insurance company to deny coverage.

It is an outrage that an illegal activity (beating the crap out of someone) could ever, in ANY way, allow more battering of the victim and allow ANY benefit to incur to ANYONE.

Where the fuck did we make that turn as a country that has led us so far astray?

. . . I only meant to say that it's not at the center of the health care debate on the whole. By any standard, it's clearly a disgrace in its own right.

and when I re-read my post I bet it came across like I was criticizing you or yelling at you. Sorry about that. I wasn't.

I think what I was trying to say in a very convoluted way was that health is made up of individual issues, and yet we create a "health care system" that focuses on norms and curves and statistics. Like having 2.5 kids -- no one really has .5 kids yet we treat that statistic as if it has some real meaning.

In the world of health it is the individual, whatever is happening, that needs to be addressed as to his or her body and life. Not the statistics and so forth. If we could get universal health care, then in my mind, we would be able to have people being treated as people by people...and that seems more closely related to the kind of country I'd like to live in.

Sorry to be crude and rude in my previous post.

You were in no way crude or rude.

I wonder if universal healthcare--which I support, at least in principle--will necessarily solve the very real problem of which you speak. It seems to me that public education very much embodies that spirit of standardization which displeases us both.

But yes. The country I'd like to live in would allow people to be treated as people by people. I'm not sure if a government bureaucracy would entirely allow for that, but I already know that a for profit system doesn't.

having had kids in public schools and now having young nieces in public schools there are some really, really good classrooms.

Standardized tests suck.

Reconciling these two things is difficult to imagine. Communities should be/could be more involved in schools in and around their centers, and the people who live there could/should be more supportive. Mentoring, being involved, sharing knowledge... etc. But not from big government mandates, but because the community cares about what is going on.

Perhaps Health Care could be more like that. Small community supported health providers. I mean, what is really wrong with Walk-In clinics? If they are staffed by qualified professionals, and they offer things like wellness exams, school physicals, x-rays, basic bone-setting, antibiotics, flu care, bee stings, allergies... etc. Of course they would be expected to do heart surgery but you could have a hospital or two for that.

And if I go to some government agency, like the Driver's License office and take my birth certificate (which I need to get my original license) thus proving my country of birth, or other naturalization documentation then I could get some kind of holographic mark included on my license or ID and that would be all I'd need to walk in to the Clinic, and get my flu shot or my kid's physical or whatever. Including if my husband beat the shit out of me, or if my kid is hooked on crack and I"m freaking out and haven't slept in three days for worry.

I walk in, I present my card, I need help, I get it.

Period.

It sounds so simple doesn't it?

Schools could use some improvement, especially from the governmental-standardized-test­ing-formula (get rid of it) but I do think if you walked into 100 classrooms in America, at random, you'd find that 90% would be decent deliverers of education for those particular kids in that particular setting. Just a guess, but it's a gut feeling.

They can't say that the first time he beat her was pre-existing.

And I am wondering how the woman could be denied without proof. The husband should have to have been convicted or something.