No pre-existing conditions
Just when I thought that our world was at least making a concentrated effort in equalizing what has been embarrassingly lopsided for so long, I finished reading a novel by local Amelia Island author Nadine Vaughan about senseless racism and rampant discrimination and now another ugly reality is put back into focus with the current healthcare debate on all front pages: Insurance companies treat women as pre-existing conditions!
In my defense for such ignorance I can only state that I was born and grew up in a small country where women played an equal role in society. In the Netherlands I grew up in there was no question about equality in human value. Race discrimination was never an issue. At least not until government policies created unfair imbalances in immigration and gender discrimination was quickly abolished when women became educated contributors to the economic processes in the sixties and seventies. In the fifties women elected to be home and raise the kids. In the sixties “liberation” became a crie de coeur and today the total working population is 50.5% male and 49.5% female and salaries are equal. Opportunity is truly equal.
The absurdity of insurance companies here in the United States to affix pre-existing conditions to women in their approval processes would not stand a chance in hell in Holland. They would be boycotted of out business.
From a business point of view I can attach pre-existing conditions to about any transaction I can think of, especially when it comes to health insurance.
-Is a cesarian a pre-existing condition for the next pregnancy?
-Does the fact that I have cases of diabetes somewhere in the family, giving me a pre-existing condition?
-Does the fact that I live 40 miles from my job, while my co-workers live in the immediate vicinity of work qualify me as a pre-existing condition.
I guess in a country where your car insurance premium is higher when you own a home, than if you don’t, anything is possibly a pre-existing condition. After all, litigation is the ultimate answer, n’est-ce pas?
Frankly I am disgusted with this profit manipulation. On the horizon I can see the reality looming that when all our personal DNA structures have been captured in data bases, health insurance as it is today will add a lot of good people to the pre-existing condition list. You were born with the gene that causes Alzheimer and you better ask your family to put some help aside as it will be a pre-existing condition. But long before that happens we will witness realities as are happening now here at home and in faraway places.
Did you know that Tuberculosis victims in South Africa are now selling their Sputum to healthy individuals, who will now take these samples to government banks for free medications and financial aid? Of course the medications are now sold on the black markets.
When will we find our way back to decency?
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I just don't understand why Americans are so afraid to change a healthcare system that is so very wrong, it is in your face everyday and yet by all news accounts you would think that you would do anything to get and try something new. In Canada and other countries we don't worry about being a man or woman, having or not having money, everyone is treated and everyone does pretty good. Is our system flawed…of course as we and the thus the system is not perfect but for heaven sakes support your President and move to try something new what will you loose if you don't like it you can go back to the old way. People outside your country see the big Insurance Co running your lives are you to close to see it as well?
Finding the way back to decency will only start when we as a human race can collectively abolish the thought that one person has more value then another. The cornerstones of all evil are centuries long doctrine founded in religions, race differentiation and class differentiation.
Hypothetically it would be interesting to see when the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries will become the dominant super powers in the next 10 or so years. What will happen to the class and nationality differentiation based on their growing world status. Will the USA become an isolated teethless protectorate?
Just a question to ponder over and maybe collectively we see the nonsense that is staring us in the face when we try to justify that one person deserves healthcare while the next, based on very vague standards, gender or race, is denied.
Like you I'm from a country where people do not have to worry about getting sick and how to pay for it. All the babble here about quality of medical care and abuse of the system is just another excuse to avoid change that is needed.
Philosophically it would mean that the US through its upcoming decline will be ahead of the game in evolving into a new era of enlightenment. The BRIC countries are very much layered into social hierarchies and will have to go through much of the same as Europe went through in the 1960-70's and the US currently. It's the balancing of life's values. Economically the US will loose its dominancy but it will gain spiritually. Of course this may and probably will take another decade of civil unrest and diametrically opposing views. But in the end change will be inevitable.