Woman's Rape Case Called "Pre-Existing Condition"

Discussion in 'Politics' started by StackedDeck, Oct 22, 2009.

  1. StackedDeck

    StackedDeck New Member

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    Rape victim's choice: risk AIDS or health insurance?

    Christina Turner feared that she might have been sexually assaulted after two men slipped her a knockout drug. She thought she was taking proper precautions when her doctor prescribed a month's worth of anti-AIDS medicine.

    Only later did she learn that she had made herself all but uninsurable.

    Turner had let the men buy her drinks at a bar in Fort Lauderdale. The next thing she knew, she said, she was lying on a roadside with cuts and bruises that indicated she had been raped. She never developed an HIV infection. But months later, when she lost her health insurance and sought new coverage, she ran into a problem.

    Turner, 45, who used to be a health insurance underwriter herself, said the insurance companies examined her health records. Even after she explained the assault, the insurers would not sell her a policy because the HIV medication raised too many health questions.

    Some women have said they were deemed ineligible for health insurance because they had a pre-existing condition as a result of a rape, such as post traumatic stress disorder or a sexually transmitted disease. Other patients and therapists wrote in with allegations that insurers are routinely denying long-term mental health care to women who have been sexually assaulted.

    Some doctors and nurses said that the industry's policy is not medically sound. "The chance of a rape victim actually contracting AIDS is very low. It doesn't make any sense to use that as a calculus for determining who get health insurance," said Dr. Alex Schafir, faculty instructor at Providence St. Vincent Hospital in Portland, Ore.

    And you guys don't want health care reform?

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/21/insurance-companies-rape-_n_328708.html
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qs0toG8YZRE&feature=sub
     

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