Posted by noa on April 1, 2003, at 4:27:04
In reply to Re: Medical Insurance - UK Members, posted by cybercafe on March 31, 2003, at 23:49:22
Why couldn't the insurance company just disallow cancellations due to depression? I mean, statistically, how many people submit travel insurance claims due to their depression? Mostly, I would assume, these days especially, that cancellations would be due to events, like war, or acute illnesses, like the flu. It seems like blanket discrimination to me.
It used to be quite the norm here in the US for health insurance companies to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions, so when person left a job and tried to get new insurance either on their own or through a new employer, they could be denied insurance altogether, or denied any coverage for such conditions, like diabetes or depression, etc. Even pregnancy, only they weren't allowed to say so. For example, I once had insurance where only dire emergency (and they gave a list! heart attack, traumatic wounds, etc.) care was covered for the first 260 days of being on the plan. Hmm....
But during the Clinton years, a law was passed to protect people from being denied health insurance for pre-existing conditions.
Life insurance is a whole other story. You can be denied life insurance and they don't even have to tell you why they denied it. There was a man a few years ago who died of AIDS. Neither he nor his wife even knew he was HIV positive. Well, it turns out that he had been denied life insurance a while before he became ill, only they didn't tell him why. But it was because the life insurance application required a medical check up, which included blood tests, which included an HIV test, which led to the insurance denial, but no one bothered telling the person that his blood test came back HIV positive!
I had never heard that you have to have life insurance to get a mortgage. I guess the laws are quite different from country to country. What would be the reason for life insurance to get a home loan? Isn't the home security enough? Like cybercafe said, they can just reposess. Plus, statistically, suicide is probably rather rare compared to how many people have depression.
Over here, they are so eager to get people to buy houses that it is rare to be denied a mortgage--where they get you is how much interest you have to pay. So if you have not so good credit, you can usually still get a mortgage, only you are not going to get a good rate.
But even more strange to me is the travel insurance.
Sorry you have to deal with this hassle. It seems very discriminatory to me.
poster:noa
thread:211823
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20030401/msgs/214974.html