The Customers Insurance Companies Don't Want

From 2007 through 2009, our four biggest health insurance companies refused to sell policies to one of every seven applicants … on account of pre-existing medical conditions.

These were people who didn’t have access to group plans, who attempted to buy coverage on their own. (An estimated 15.7 million American adults are covered by individual policies.) In the three years mentioned above, these four companies rejected 651,000 potential new customers. One company had a list of 425 diagnoses that could be used as grounds for refusal.

During the same period, the companies denied 212,800 claims from customers who had “exclusions” on their existing policies.

Where did I get these numbers? From a 9-page report released last week by the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce. There’s more. Read it yourself at

Coverage Denials for Pre-Existing Conditions in the Individual Health Insurance Market

After you do, I’d like to hear from you. Is there anyone out there who thinks this is okay?

Maybe that was a vague question. Let me try to be more precise.

By “okay,” I didn’t mean: Is it Fair? Is it Moral? Is it Humane? Those are good questions to consider, but they aren’t what I meant to ask.

I meant: Does anybody believe our country will be okay if this sort of thing continues?

Can our workforce remain viable? – because it’s working-age Americans, people between 18 and 65, that were covered in this report.

Can the economy take the hit? Some of those uninsured people just won’t get medical care when they need it, but many others will wind up in county hospitals or emergency rooms. And somebody will have to pay. According to a clause in the Affordable Care Act, in 2008 alone it cost $43 billion to provide “uncompensated care” to the uninsured.

One interesting point in the committee’s report: the number of rejected applicants increased quite a bit from one year to the next. There were:

• 172,400 in 2007
• 221,400 in 2008
• 257,100 in 2009

For years I've had a gut feeling that the health insurance market is getting more and more unfriendly. Now I have some numbers to back it up.

Early voting for the November 2 elections starts tomorrow. Politicians all over the country are campaigning on promises to repeal the health care reform act, which contains provisions to stop practices like this.

If those politicians succeed, we can expect that denial of coverage and claims will continue unabated. And more and more Americans may find themselves falling into that gap.

More info in the Wall Street Journal online