Canadian couple experiences pre-Obamacare US medical care

[ksen]

http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/millio...bill-after-woman-gives-birth-in-u-s-1.2107020

Huculak was six months pregnant when she flew to Hawaii for a holiday with her husband in October 2013. Before her trip, she bought Blue Cross insurance and received approval from her doctor.

But two days into her trip, Huculak's water broke and she spent the next six weeks on bed rest in a Hawaiian hospital. Her daughter was born nine weeks early and spent two months in intensive care.

While she's grateful that her 11-month-old daughter is now healthy, Huculak and her husband were left with a $950,000 medical bill.

"It makes you sick to your stomach," she told CTV Saskatoon. "Who can pay a million-dollar medical bill? Who can afford that?"

Blue Cross is refusing to pay any of the amount, arguing that Huculak had a pre-existing condition.

Ahhh, the good old days.

I can't wait for the Republicans to figure out how to get us back to them.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Stories like this aren't uncommon and it's the main reason that I'm glad that insurance companies aren't heavily involved in medical insurance here in Canada. Where they are involved is with travel insurance, as is the case here. If they can find any reason to deny you coverage, they will do so. They're saying that she had a high risk pregnancy which she didn't declare to them and that's what caused the premature birth, but that's a lie and it's confirmed by her doctor that it wasn't one and the premature birth was caused by an unrelated bladder infection which she didn't have (or at least know about) before the trip.

Blue Cross needs to pay these costs and further regulations are needed on the travel insurance industry to keep them from screwing their customers over after the fact due to business practices like this which they keep doing.

 

[Sabine Grant]

Stories like this aren't uncommon and it's the main reason that I'm glad that insurance companies aren't heavily involved in medical insurance here in Canada. Where they are involved is with travel insurance, as is the case here. If they can find any reason to deny you coverage, they will do so. They're saying that she had a high risk pregnancy which she didn't declare to them and that's what caused the premature birth, but that's a lie and it's confirmed by her doctor that it wasn't one and the premature birth was caused by an unrelated bladder infection which she didn't have (or at least know about) before the trip.

Blue Cross needs to pay these costs and further regulations are needed on the travel insurance industry to keep them from screwing their customers over after the fact due to business practices like this which they keep doing.

This incident occurred before she could in fact seek enrollment into a plan under the Affordable Care Act which prevents all insurance companies from dumping or rejecting pre existing conditions. I will have to do some research on that but I think that as to January 1st 2014, travel insurance falls under the same mandate prohibiting the dumping of insured customers based on the claim of a pre existing condition. However, it is possible that all the mandates issued to the insurance industry were designed to benefit ONLY US citizens and US legal residents, meaning not applying to travel industry customers as foreign nationals visiting the US for a vacation. Which in that case her enrolling in a plan under all those mandates would not make her a beneficiary of the "no dumping" based on the claim of a pre existing condition issued by the insurance company.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Stories like this aren't uncommon and it's the main reason that I'm glad that insurance companies aren't heavily involved in medical insurance here in Canada. Where they are involved is with travel insurance, as is the case here. If they can find any reason to deny you coverage, they will do so. They're saying that she had a high risk pregnancy which she didn't declare to them and that's what caused the premature birth, but that's a lie and it's confirmed by her doctor that it wasn't one and the premature birth was caused by an unrelated bladder infection which she didn't have (or at least know about) before the trip.

Blue Cross needs to pay these costs and further regulations are needed on the travel insurance industry to keep them from screwing their customers over after the fact due to business practices like this which they keep doing.

This incident occurred before she could in fact seek enrollment into a plan under the Affordable Care Act which prevents all insurance companies from dumping or rejecting pre existing conditions. I will have to do some research on that but I think that as to January 1st 2014, travel insurance falls under the same mandate prohibiting the dumping of insured customers based on the claim of a pre existing condition. However, it is possible that all the mandates issued to the insurance industry were designed to benefit ONLY US citizens and US legal residents, meaning not applying to travel industry customers as foreign nationals visiting the US for a vacation. Which in that case her enrolling in a plan under all those mandates would not make her a beneficiary of the "no dumping" based on the claim of a pre existing condition issued by the insurance company.

It has nothing to do with Obamacare. It's Canadian insurance for Canadian travellers. Our travel insurance companies do the same kinds of things that your medical insurance companies do (or used to do if Obamacare is stopping them from doing that now). As soon as a claim is made, they start looking into ways to deny that claim. It's less of an issue, since medical problems during travel aren't as prevalent as medical problems during life in general, but it's still the same fucking over of customers that you all are used to.

If somebody hadn't mentioned a pre-existing condition and then that condition caused hospitalization on the trip, then I'm fine with the claim being denied because they were trying to fuck over the insurance company. This is a case, as exists in many other cases, when they are trying to fuck over their customer.

 

[ksen]

because they were trying to fuck over the insurance company

heaven forbid!