@Mackinstyle: My brother was a picky eater up until he was about 17. The doctor told my mom to just feed him what he would eat, continue to offer him other foods, and he'd grow out of it eventually. His eating horizons greatly expanded when he started going to restaurants with his friends.

No Health insurer should not be a non profits - they obviously do not function for the community.

That's my issue.

Establish healthy food habits first. Then introduce the junk food. That's what a good parent would do. And as an aside, fruit is much healthier than chocolate.

@kaceetheconsumer: Yeah, I hate to think what would've happened to me as a teenager if I'd been American. I was 5'2", and had insane metabolism. I was known to shove entire pizzas in my face, and still had toruble keeping my weight over 100 lbs. I also had a couple of (entirely unrelated) major hospitalizations, so I'm inclined to think I wouldn't be here now, or at the very least couldn't afford to be writing this.

Also the weight lift growth stunting is a myth.

@kaceetheconsumer: Having a healthy and abundant diet will definitely promote growth without involving corn. Corn has barely any presence in several cultures with very tall (tallest actually) people, think the Vikings and other nordic countries. They've always been known for tall men and corn wasn't in Europe before they went to the new world.

They should find a cure for it personally.

It's a sad commentary, though, that our health insurance system can be so directly at odds with our public health needs.

Fortunately, her mother works for Blue Cross. But if she didn't... ?

So, what is your point? -- That these "unusual cases" don't deserve coverage for medical care?

Crikey.

(It's not true, but with luck he'll choke on his food out of shock and die.)

But I digress.

It's just an unwise thing to do, especially since now she has a penchant for chocolate, as the mother acknowledges in the article. I don't even want my kid to sample chocolate until he's at least 3. That'll require major discipline on my part, but it's for my kid's well-being, and that's important.

There's a difference between sound underwriting, and entire classes of people being excluded from health care because insurance companies play hot potato with sick people.

Oh, but it's not hitting. That's only for making jokes about!

When your son is old enough that you will actually have to make choices about what to feed him, you will learn a few things: that humans are descended from apes who perceive and enjoy sugar, because that's how we tell fruit is ripe and good to eat; and that you can introduce all the 'healthy choices' in the world, but it's not going to insure that your children happily eat brown-rice tofu casserole and shun ice cream.

I urge you to save your post, so you can look back on it and laugh at it someday. Probably when your child refuses to eat anything but Cheerios, plain macaroni and things he finds under the couch.

@katstermonster: okay, wow. i have asperger syndrome. i did not know that insurance companies in the u.s. could deny coverage based on that.

up here in canuckville, doctor and hospital visits are free for all citizens, and insured health plans usually cover prescriptions, dental, etc.

plans obtained through work are usually free / nominal cost, and people are not generally denied coverage for any reason (individuals can purchase their own coverage through blue cross, but i don't know if this kind of coeverage is ever denied). there are also some coverage plans for low-income people.

@catastrophegirl:You poor thing it sounds like you have had a tough hand delt when it comes to health. I hope other things in life make up for it. Good luck.

@FTWGeek (With Friends Now):I used to have the same problem. I learned that if I have a mouth full of water then put in the pill no problem.

@GitEmSteveDave_FeelsLikeABurningAngel: You know what? I DON'T CARE! This should NEVER happen. EVER. It's wrong. Health care needs to be not-for-profit since people are greedy assholes that would rather have a McMansion than a healthy neighbor.

Though mayo also does make me want to hoark...

My point is - vague or not, that statement is troubling. And yes, food preferences might be influenced by in utero experiences, but you're not supposed to feed a baby chocolate until they're at least 12 months of age, so chocolate was introduced later on in life (hopefully) with this toddler anyway. In fact, the only foods my 5 month old son has come into contact with are breastmilk and formula. You don't have to introduce the wrong foods to a young child who is already having food problems. (And if they didn't know, still, it's chocolate. Couldn't they have experimented with healthier alternatives?)

I agree that we tend to overtest in the US--I'm fascinated by this current brouhaha about the acknowledgment that some cancer diagnostics are actually counterproductive--but geez, can you get much more "blame the victim" than that?

@PsiCop: I mention it because its actual existence is being battled out in Congress now, where some are seeking to make it illegal for companies to use it as a reason to deny coverage. So I'd say fight that battle first, and if insurance companies win, then fight the semantic one :)

The stuff I was reading on the in utero front was mostly about tolerance for chilis and such. The one I remember most vividly was a group of babies fed really blechy, totally unsweet formula and their subsequent willingness to eat stuff like vegetables, which was greater than those who had really sweet formula. Basically, it does sound like that we greet some tastes more openly if we were exposed young, but that we really do fixate on sweet if we're not trained in other directions.

"The Greatest Generation" are mostly dead.

"The Worst Generation" is the one of which you are sick.
[www.superseventies.com]

That's probably part of penalizing women in general anyway.

If you go to a system where no one can be rejected, cases like this will not only not be the norm, they will be nonexistent.

...and you should have seen the $hit hit the fan when she found out my breasts were larger than hers. Nothing more blood-curdling embarrassing than being in a dressing room in JcPenny, slipping a bra that fit me over the door to her, then hearing, "My boobs weren't even that big after I had you!!!! Now put on this A cup! I t will fit you!!" (she later handed me a size 20 dress to try on...when I wore a 6) T_T

Granted the diet may have had some role in my height/weight, but genetically I don't think there was any way I was going to be as petite as a full-blooded Korean girl.

I'll blame it on a corn-fed diet tho....just because it will be more fun that way. ^_^

When we met there were some things he had never had. He usually always ate whatever I gave him, because he was used to eating all his food or starve, but would sometimes ask "WHAT'S THAT???" like a little kid.

My mom did make this punch with juice and ginger ale that was SO GOOD.

REALLY? Ha ha ha, my friend ate 7 million cookies when she was pregnant with her daughter (who is now 17) and I kept telling her she would give birth to the Cookie Monster. When the kid was old enough to eat cookies,that's all she wanted. I said "I TOLD YOU!"

Who knew I was right! ;)

also, thanks for the suggestion but peanut butter is on the list of things i might have to have surgically removed if i ever eat it again. but that's because of the [2 yrs ago] nerve damage to my stomach, not a lifelong allergy

I wish I was born later. I'm female and almost six feet tall. Hard to buy clothes; hard to find dates. Tall men date tiny women, and the shorter men won't date us because they don't want the woman to be taller. Guess I need to find a Dutch guy! :)

But I love the smooth, processed frozen sweet potato patties. They don't have that texture. You might try them.

I dont' get it!

I guess they just want people with anything more than a hangnail to just die.

Wow, I had no idea there were so many people who reacted so poorly to certain kinds of food (not like allergies, but retching and throwing up). I don't think I have anything that makes me throw up like that. There are things that are disgusting, but not regular foods like yams, eggs, mayo or onions.

With mine? She just plain old doesn't want to eat. When she does eat, so eats so healthy (just fruit) that she doesn't stay on pace with others her age.

Now that mine can use a fork and can verbalize what she wants, she is starting to eat and gain weight, so there probably wasn't an underlying condition, just a small child who didn't like food and didn't know how to eat it and wouldn't let anyone else do it for her.

It's sad for these people because just because someone isn't "normal" doesn't mean there really is anything wrong. Someone has to be on the bottom.

@PsiCop: I think by doing that, you are implicitly acknowledging that the practice of denying "pre-coverage" conditions is a given, therefore taking away attention from the actual validity of the practice. It's like, "It's here to stay so we might as well improve what we call it".

@Chris Walters: Could we just eat the peanut butter by itself? :)

Eggs prepared other ways are unappetizing, and hard-boiled eggs or egg salad make me nauseous even to see or smell them, let alone eat them.

@zentex: ""EAT YOUR FSCKING VEGGIES BEFORE I KNOCK YOU INTO NEXT WEEK".

Damn, I feel bad for any kid subjected to threats of violence just because of vegetables.

I first read about this 4 or 5 years ago in a cool article in The New Yorker, but I see it pop up again every once in a while. I tend to think of it as a warning sign that we're doing something wrong as a nation, and wish there'd be more attention paid to it in the media.

[www.marginalrevolution.com]

From the New Yorker article:

Then something strange happened. While heights in Europe continued to climb, Komlos said, "the U.S. just went flat." In the First World War, the average American soldier was still two inches taller than the average German. But sometime around 1955 the situation began to reverse. The Germans and other Europeans went on to grow an extra two centimetres a decade, and some Asian populations several times more, yet Americans haven't grown taller in fifty years. By now, even the Japanese-once the shortest industrialized people on earth-have nearly caught up with us, and Northern Europeans are three inches taller and rising.

The average American man is only five feet nine and a half-less than an inch taller than the average soldier during the Revolutionary War. Women, meanwhile, seem to be getting smaller. According to the National Center for Health Statistics-which conducts periodic surveys of as many as thirty-five thousand Americans-women born in the late nineteen-fifties and early nineteen-sixties average just under five feet five. Those born a decade later are a third of an inch shorter.

[www.newyorker.com] <-- "The Height Gap"

For better or worse that may be a government run healthcare. For at least a century we are still the only highly industrialized nation that does not have such a system. It can't possibly be a terrible idea if so many do it now and have been for so long. The initial switch could be painful, but unlike insurance companies we need to look at the long term benefits of such a change instead of the short term losses.

Death panels, all of them.

@pecan 3.14159265: No more pesto nor paninis for me...

@kaceetheconsumer: Pretty sure the public campaign for me to get that star was what got it for me, not my increasing presence here!

@CatMoran: Popcorn chicken and macaroni and cheese for mine. She'll eat fruit as a snack, but mealtimes are limited to those two. With a pregnant wife who has a constant hankering for Chick-Fil-A, the chicken thing hasn't gotten any better.

Oh - she's a fwe months shy of 3 and weighs 29 lbs. I wonder if she would be excluded.

Here to help...

There was a Frontline/World a few months ago about increased height and obesity in South Korea because of the more western diet combined with too much time on the computer, and they have started sending kids to computer de-tox camps to force them to go exercise outside.

Not that I'm saying you're on the computer too much to earn that gold star or anything. ;D

(disclaimer: not obese, just sick of the greatest generation)

A far better, and semantically sensible, alternative to "pre-existing condition" would be "pre-coverage condition." Or perhaps "condition in advance of coverage," which becomes an acronym, CIAC. (I'm sure there are many other, equally logical and sensible, alternatives.) Is there any way we can campaign for people to start using one of these? Or are we forced to keep using mangled and nonsensical language simply because insurance companies have decided to keep using it?

Juice was for breakfast only pretty much. that and for popsicles in the summer.

Really, it's this sort of thing that makes it clear that they just reject a certain percentage of claims off the bat and check whatever box that takes their fancy for the reason.

I've also used a free clinic in London as a visitor, with no problems beyond a surprisingly modest wait.

@MostlyHarmless: Well, I guess I'm really trying to say that I grew up in a more urban environment with a variety of people whereas Mr. Pi grew up in a very homogeneous rural environment. Everyone pretty much ate similar foods there. Not so much with me, where everything I ate (grandma cooked) was really weird in contrast with what other people ate. I'd have a piece of pizza at lunch and crackers during snack time, and I'd get home and eat rehydrated mushrooms, dried oysters and the occasional preserved egg. Sometimes there would be a whole fish on the table, head and everything.

What? You bought beer at the grocery store? Your an alcoholic so were kicking you off the policy.

Also when I was in the UK as an exchange student, we just used the NHS without any paperwork or problems.

@pecan 3.14159265: Well of course. This is Consumerist, where the vehemence and sureness of a comment is inversely proportional to a) actual knowledge and b) likelihood of having read the article.

@zentex: It's good that you've found a whole new way to give your kid issues about food and being touched.

Two-year-olds have weird eating habits. They grow out of it.

BTW Many North American Indian tribes due to their high protein diet (mostly around the coasts) tended to be massive in comparison to English colonists.

@thesadtomato: Not knowing what state you lived in, I can't possibly tell you whether there was a law. I can tell you that I wouldn't assume your physician was talking about something being illegal, rather than how insurers make deals with employers. I would presume that most employers, when they negotiate for health insurance, agree that "you will automatically cover our employees without screening them first", since that's a big part of the benefit. I don't know that would prevent an insurer from offering a cut-rate package where "we will cover your employees but not if they have pre-existing conditions".

@squinko: It was vegetables in general, not being regularly exposed to different kinds enough to make it the norm. And it was vegetables not being prepared in a way that was actually tasty. His moms is a great cook, but she only does vegetables a few ways. They taste good, but there's no variety. Mr. Pi likes mashed and scalloped potatoes, which I don't think he had very much of as a kid.

I looked into this at length when I was without insurance because I got too sick to work so I lost my insurance so I couldn't get better to go back to work. Isn't the US free market great!

@Hoss: and coffee, and lifting weights too early...the list may actually go on.

For decades insurance worked just fine with "pre-existing conditions". You had cancer? Well, ok, we'll add a rider that says we'll cover anything but your cancer. You're pregnant? Well, here's a rider excluding maternity benefits, but you're totally good to go for broken bones, heart attacks or strokes.

Now? I'm convinced that the insurance companies are actively trying to destroy themselves.

@Mackinstyle: Not always, sometimes there is an underlying medical condition. Though most of the time, you're probably right.

(i love fried banana chips, though!)

You laugh, but my daughter was initially denied our claim for my daughter's birth, claiming it was a pre-existing condition.

But not taking the long view: insurance companies will try and screw you over.

Can you guess what the monthly budget for First Aid was at my home?

Thank god. I hesitate to imagine w hat the side effects of that kind of intervention would be.

@pinkbunnyslippers: Food therapy is vague enough that you can attribute many meanings to it. Food therapy can be as simple as meeting with a nutritionist who can outline things they can try giving her that won't set off her gag reflex, while maintaining proper nutrition goals.

I hate picky eaters. I wasn't a picky eater when I was a kid because my mom made me eat whatever she put in front of me. She didn't take no for an answer. It's pretty much why I loved broccoli when I was a kid. Mr. Pi is a picky eater. I attribute this to the way he was raised - he ate a small range of foods, wasn't exposed to a great deal of other flavors or ethnic foods, and his parents acquiesced too often when he refused to eat vegetables. We're working on expanding his palate now (he eats potatoes!) but it's a work in progress.

@H3ion: Now if we can apply that to every insured person in America at all times, we might get somewhere.

For instance, some children are born without the ability to absorb nutrition and must have formula pumped directly into their stomach, so they never learn how to properly suck/chew/bite/swallow. When they are being weaned off of that system, they must be taught how to eat basically because they can't do it properly. It's usually done in stages of thickness with emphasis on odd textures.

@ShruggingGalt: S-CHIP is government health care and government health care is bad, unless of course, it prevents government health care from getting passed...wait...

@LeChiffre: Why not juice?

@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): I can vouch for a the STD part. A friend's doctor (no, its not really me) actually told her to stop asking for an STD panel from her and get it done at a local clinic. She also said that she should tell the clinic that she does NOT want her results to be sent to her doctor.

@FTWGeek (With Friends Now): I usually don't have a problem with pills, but now I'm gun-shy since this one time my throat was dry and I swallowed a DayQuil without water and it got stuck. I was sitting in an airport by myself, in severe pain, and couldn't speak. I got it dislodged, but it was a horrible experience.

"We wanted to fix her picky eating, because we want her to be able to eat a wide variety of foods, and not just things she wants to eat, like chocolate," Rachel Bates told TODAY.

Wow, that is about 98% of parents today. I don't know many kids who have a hankering for brussel sprouts, and who DON'T want to only eat chocolate 24/7.

Kids are picky. You know what my parents did instead of putting me in "Food Therapy"? They gave me a Flintstone's Vitamin.

The doctor didn't prescribe this therapy - they sought it out on their own. Anytime you get any sort of "therapy" - no matter your age, it's indicative of a larger scale problem. An insurance company's job, in part with actually insuring you, is to calculate your risk. High risk = highly uninsurable.

I'm not saying reform isn't necessary, but isn't anyone going to say the parents maybe overreacted a bit here?

@pecan 3.14159265: Not to worry! I can do all baked goods and breads and whatnot, because the eggs aren't prominent. And also because they're delicious!

@katstermonster: I loooove sushi. I don't like sashimi (the raw fish type of sushi) but I love cooked sushi. Mmmmm. Ebi, unagi, all good things. And I love seaweed, just lightly roasted and salted.

@acvicari: Agreed. There are some really phenomenal sushi places, you just have to look for them. Sushi should never be cold (room temperature to slightly warmed), and should never be mushy.

When I was a kid, Kool-Aid was outlawed by my mom. The only night of the week that we got soda (Coca-Cola) was Sunday night with our dinner (one glass, no more). Other than Sunday night, we got milk or water, regardless of the seasons. I am NOT exaggerating either.

Not great, but in my case the condition is chronic, so it wasn't going to be cured in 18 months and I could afford my meds while uninsured anyway. But I wasn't excluded.

A lot of commenters don't seem to be understanding that this isn't a kid who throws tantrums and refuses to eat anything except chocolate - it's a girl who has a gag reflex to certain foods, and as such, an inability to consume those foods because they make her throw up.

The parents took her to food therapy so that she could perhaps overcome this reflex and enjoy a wide range of food. Yes, all kids have their weird picky phases. Some kids only want to eat ketchup, and some kids only want to eat peanut butter. But want is the keyword. This girl doesn't have a choice if her gag reflex is causing her to throw up certain vegetables or fruits.

@pecan 3.14159265: You failed to mention the grade school smoking habit

Zentex, I'm glad you've found a way, but your child is not everybody's child.

I'd agree with you StephenDave, but was the "fat" baby eventually insured? Will this girl? And then would it be only because of the media attention and public attention?

@GitEmSteveDave_FeelsLikeABurningAngel: Yes but,,,this little girl would probably be an outlier, which in this case SHOULD cause a red flag for more analysis, therefore determining whether she is sick, abnormal, etc. In America, she very well could be an outlier, however, go to France and she could, and probably would, be the norm. This is why in LSS we need large quantifiable population samples to determine the normal bell curve, if there is one. Come over to Metro Detroit; she ain't the norm. As for me? At ten years of age I was a little, scrawny, of a very white boy who looked malnurished. But my mom said she couldn't feed me enough.
Now insurance companies are creating a new "norm" just to justify their coverage and lack thereof, which will probably end up in court and they'll have to prove their reasonings.

@thesadtomato: Yeah, right! I was denied by my employer's group insurance because i'm a diabetic. It happens.

@FTWGeek (With Friends Now): I had this problem when I was a kid. I got over it by realizing that the alternative to swallowing pills was taking the liquid version, which was always disgusting. I got over swallowing pills very, very quickly.

I find that sending the pill toward the back of the throat helps it go down easier because your tongue doesn't have to throw it back.

The dad VOLUNTARILY quit to become self-employed, and that's when the trouble started.

Q:

1) Why didn't they accept COBRA?
2) Do they qualify for S-CHIP, or does he expect to make a lot of money?

Another case for getting rid of preexisting conditions, but you're going to have to mandate coverage. Or else the healthy people won't buy coverage until it's needed, and that's the same as buying auto insurance after you've been in accident. (and expecting it to cover the accident!)

@zentex: With this kid, though, it wasn't as simple as being a brat and throwing temper tantrums and refusing food - she had a gag response that made her want to throw up certain foods. You start throwing up certain foods when you eat it, see how you like it if someone tried to give it to you again. I totally understand how she may refuse certain types of food because of fear as to what it may feel like to eat it, not because she's just being difficult.

@Tamar Weinberg: There isn't enough to say whether they fed her a ton of sugar, though. The statement is too vague to suggest this.

It's possible that she was given a lot of fruits, vegetables, and the occasional treat, and she latched onto the chocolate out of preference, or that she a bad experience with vegetables and fruits and the chocolate didn't cause her gag response to act up.

Kids like sweets. Young children have more sensitive taste buds, and may react more strongly (in a positive way) to sweet flavors.

And also, I really think this was essentially the law in the last state I lived in. I got diagnosed with something while uninsured and my physician told me I couldn't be denied coverage under group insurance plans. And I wasn't.

@linkura: im a 110 is pound 32 year old healthy active man. i got down to 95 pounds when i was buying my home but that was a stressfull situation.

Besides, there's some decent evidence that kids' food tastes and inclinations are strongly influenced by in utero experiences and genetics. By the time the parenting factors in, it's an uphill climb against the structure that's already there.

insurance needs to be outlawed. it is just plain evil. im sure something better can be found.

I think you need to find a better place to try sushi. If it's cold, mushy, and salty, you're ordering the wrong things from someone who doesn't know what they're doing.

Damn.

You don't need "food therapy", you just need to be a better parent and learn to say "EAT YOUR FSCKING VEGGIES BEFORE I KNOCK YOU INTO NEXT WEEK".

Disclaimer: I have a 2 year old whom I do not knock, nor threaten to knock, into next week. I actually find tickling makes her eat them quicker so I'll stop.

If health insurance was truly portable (like auto insurance) then this story would never have happened. He could have kept his health insurance at United for all this time and it never been a problem.

Or, if you want to take it a step further, allow "switching" to be exempted from pre-existing conditions if they've had insurance for continuously for the last "x" years.

We wanted to fix her picky eating, because we want her to be able to eat a wide variety of foods, and not just things she wants to eat, like chocolate"

I pity the family for this, and I think it's definitely the insurance company's fault, but I'm troubled by the statement above. It would have been better parenting to feed the child healthy foods before introducing her to sugars and sweets. The healthy food foundation should have been firmly established. Surrendering to sugar is not an answer.

Then again, if they want her to put on a few pounds, maybe they should focus a little more on the chocolate.

@katstermonster: Don't tell me you also can't eat waffles and pancakes, though. Pancakes! Waffles!

@kaceetheconsumer: Crap, I could have been shorter? I'm Asian and I grew up on a North American diet and I'm stuck at 5'3. Perish the thought that things on the top shelf could be even more unreachable.

@pecan 3.14159265: Blech. Those might be the worst. Omelets (sp?), hard-boiled, soft-boiled, over easy, over medium, over hard, scrambled, the works. And I've tried eating them soooo many times. It makes eating breakfast out a pain, because breakfast meat is so unhealthy, it's hard to get protein without eating eggs. When I'm at home, I just have dinner for breakfast, heh.

@ScarletsWalk: What I think may be happening is that she is picky through the conditioning from her gag response. Once a kid gets a few tastes of something that makes her gag response act up, the kid would start associating certain foods with the gag response. It's much healthier overall to try to condition a kid to overcome or try to avoid the gag response and the subsequent fear of an unpleasant feeling when eating than to just keep giving her different food and writing down the ones that don't make her throw up. All that does is encourage avoidance, rather than alleviation and solution of the problem, and like floraposte said, it would mean a kid who only eats XYZ because those are the things that don't cause a gag response.

They were trying to get rid of the problem rather than sidestep it.

@GitEmSteveDave_FeelsLikeABurningAngel: Rant! Illogical assumption! Insert further bluster here!

My parents were like, "Since we've been on this same plan for more than 20 years and you were insuring her back when she was a single-celled organism in her mother's uterus, NOTHING FREAKING PRE-EXISTS HER COVERAGE!"

So, yeah, "life" is pretty much a pre-existing condition. Or in my sister's case, existence as a ovum counts for a pre-existing condition (since the sperm gametes are created on demand).

My husband and I are caucasian and fairly short compared to Americans because we were raised on different diets in other countries. It's actually a right royal pain in the ass because it's hard to find clothes that fit us, and things like kitchen cabinets etc are always taller than we'd like.

@MikeHerbst: +1 with awesome sauce and kitten sprinkles.

Your snark is actually at the crux of the situation.

It is likely to be 100% certain that every single insured person in this country could have multiple reasons for denying coverage.

@katstermonster: What about hard-boiled eggs?

In fact, if other countries were smart, they'd implement some fast policies to fish the educated people out of the US now while they can, using health care as a big fat lure. Too bad governments in general aren't smart like that...

@AirIntake: Egads, sushi is another one, but for me, it's the seaweed. All I can taste is the seaweed. I literally pick it apart to eat it, kind of a pain.

And I'm really not a picky eater, although this is making it look like I am! I love all kinds of foods, the weirder, the better....just some really basic stuff throws me off. Heh.

Some parents choose simply not to treat the asthma at all, rather than having it appear in their kids' medical records. Others see pediatricians who call it "seasonal bronchitis" to protect the kids.

It's a very broken system.

(I got told when I went to have a full STD panel before, ahem, becoming sexually active, that I should go to the anonymous clinic to have it done because having an STD panel, which RESPONSIBLE PEOPLE DO BEFORE HAVING SEX WITH A NEW PARTNER, was evidence of a "risky lifestyle" and would win you an insurance denial. I'm very pleased that my state requires certain STD tests with pregnancy, because it's important to have them done for the safety of the baby and recommended for all pregnancies, but you know if they weren't required by the state, insurers would penalize you for having them done.)

The insurance company "reversed" its decision and will insure Aislin Bates. Wonderful what a little publicity and some public outrage will do.

@pecan 3.14159265: Yup. It's very weird, I don't get it. Quiche can sometimes be borderline, and it has to have a lot of other stuff in it, but I'm usually good. I can do a lot of other foods that have eggy textures, I think it's the combination of that and the smell/taste of egg, which isn't as prominent in custard/quiche. Ugh, the smell. I hate being around when people are cooking eggs...

I'm sure those parents would love nothing more than to have her have a healthy, well-balanced diet.

@Alarm Bell: Guess where they got the idea of death panels from?....

Insurance company denies coverage to healthy man because he is alive, a pre-existing condition.

Company executives were quoted as saying "Mr. Saunders was clearly alive when he applied for insurance with us. This pre-existing condition is known to have a nearly 100% mortality rate. We simply can't stay in business if we insure every lost cause that comes our way!"

@thesadtomato: That would depend on the contract with the employer, and how much the insurer feels like violating it.

I don't know what "food therapy" entails (Google mostly gets me stuff about curing yourself with food, not modifying your food responses), but if it manages to avoid that with a kid who's headed that way, it's probably worthwhile.

Ireland treated her just by virtue of her body being in their country.

If the system doesn't get fixed, eventually it'll turn into a massive brain drain for the USA.

I think more than just annoying, but simply a bankruptcy waiting to happen.

@katstermonster: Interesting that you can eat quiche. Can you eat custards?

@farcedude: It's still so absurd to me that it's not illegal to deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions. Mind-boggling. Especially when things like Crohn's and Asperger's Syndrome fall under there. one could argue that Crohn's leads to a variety of health issues, but Asperger's? What? Because someone has trouble in social situations, they're a risk to insure? Ridiculous.

Just another reason we need healthcare reform. It's somewhere between irresponsible and well-nigh impossible to go without health insurance, and becoming more and more difficult to get it as the insurers keep redrawing the lines to allow fewer people.

What about genetics when it comes to ethnicity? Isn't it widely accepted that those of European descent are larger and taller than those of Asian descent? Asian kids could be smaller than their Caucasian counterparts. If we're just looking at weight, could this be grounds for being uninsurable?

@dulcinea47: Some people have taste/texture issues that go beyond not just liking a food. I have a gag reflex to eggs and many things made with eggs, if that egg-y texture is predominant (but not with most quiche, go figure). I've tried very hard to eat eggs, what with their nutritional value and whatnot, but I am almost physically incapable of doing so.

What makes this one worse is that it is group insurance not an individual plan they were kicked out of. Most of the cases of people being tossed off of plans have been individual insurance. If more people are getting booted off of employer insurance that is even more concerning.

This second incident makes me think even more that Blue Cross's healthy kids program is just a pretext to kick kids off of insurance plans.

Why would insurance companies want to kick kids off of insurance? SCHIP. Private insurance already has a track record of trying to pawn off claims and certain risks to existing government insurance type programs. So why not abandon a bunch of kids with the intent that it might force them onto SCHIP. There were some cases in the media last year about UNUM and some other disability insurers forcing people to apply for social security disability before they would continue to process their claim.

We certainly can't expect an adult to go without buying insurance over a prolonged period and then enter a plan as soon as they become ill. But in this case there is no certain illness and the individual (the child) is not making decisions about whether to be insured.

Isn't the solution to just not feed your kid too much sugar, provide them with lots of types of food, and just let them grow up?

I can't believe the people who are against health insurance reform have the gall to talk about death panels. What's this? Insurance companies sit on a panel and decide who is tall enough, heavy enough, healthy enough, strong enough to get insurance and live. The short, poor, disabled and sick do not get insurance, even if they are willing to pay out of pocket.

I was 45 pounds when I was 9 years old, but healthy (I was also short and naturally small-boned). I'm sure in this day and age I would be considered uninsurable.

Mistakes and fringe cases might happen in other systems, but not over whether she's entitled to healthcare without bankrupting her parents. The mere suggestion that her previous treatment should affect her entitlement to future care is a conversation that would never happen for standard care anywhere else.

@floraposte: Agreed. The denial can be called a mistake/anomoly/unfortunate case of someone falling outside the norm. But denying the case on appeal, after the doctor vouched for the kid? That's a problem.

@GitEmSteveDave_FeelsLikeABurningAngel: You keep telling yourself that.

These cases get publicity not because denial of claims is unusual, but because they're so absurd. "Insurer denies claim, makes you fill out more paperwork, then pays eventually" is not news.