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Dear CharlesWayneCT,

“The point is the $1200 number is NOT what it would have costed for insurance before the accident.”

In Maryland, group insurance is community-rated. There is no medical underwriting. Thus, you pay the same whether your group has had a million dollars in claims, or none at all.

As a small businessman, he could have taken out a small group policy, even though he has no workers. A small group policy requires that two separate employees must be covered. He’d have covered himself and his kids on one policy, and his wife on the other. When my business was smaller, I did this. It's an expensive way to go, but it kept my family continuously insured for some time.

However, that would easily have cost the Frosts over a thousand dollars per month, even for relatively cheap policies.

Individual insurance is also available in Maryland, but is medically-underwritten. The medical underwriting can be severe. It’s very difficult to obtain insurance if you have heart disease, diabetes, previous experience of cancer, etc. It also drives up the cost if your PARENTS had or have these conditions.

Although individual health insurance policies in Maryland can be reasonably-priced for healthy people with healthy families, the costs quickly increase for anyone with any health “dings” on the record.

I don’t know anything about the Frosts, but it is possible that individual health insurance may have been expensive even before the accident. It would be helpful to know the family’s medical history, but that is a rather intrusive thing to ask.

The difficulty for the Frosts is that they put themselves out there, apparently without thinking it through. They wanted to present their circumstances as an example of why the law is needed (ironically, as you have so astutely pointed out, their case only argues for the coverage of EXISTING law), but probably never expected folks to intrude so far into their personal lives.

That was a miscalculation on their part.

sitetest

We can't be certain, but it's a reasonable assumption. If insurance NOW would cost them $1200, AFTER the accident which left two children with large and recurring medical bills, it's reasonable to assume that BEFORE the accident, that number would have been much smaller.

Of course, they could also purchased coverage from the state. SOme of this is through the same SCHIP program, but if you check out MCHP Premium you can see that a family of 4 with an income (probably taxable, not gross) of $61,950, with 4 children, can enroll for only $57 a month for the MHCP program. Under certain levels of income, the fee is waived.

Of course, they qualified for MHCP it appears, without paying a premium. They could have had this insurance before the accident, it's comprehensive and covers doctors visits, well-care, and other things.

Virginia has a program for child health care as well.Family Access to Medical Insurance Security

I also ran a rate quote with Blue Cross, just including children, and if you went with a $2250 deductable, it was only 187 a month for two children. It's the adults that probably drove up the cost.

I'm really getting tired of this notion that WE are invading this family's privacy. The Frosts who are long time liberals volunteered to be used by liberal groups like FamiliesUSA and liberal senators. The Frosts imposed THEMSELVES on the public by crying about how awful Bush is that he wont EXPAND the program that ALREADY helped them. THEY presented themselves as just a poor needy family, despite the facts that we now know that they are clearly not and apparently not only have hundreds of thousands of dollars in equity in their house and business but drive a new car. The Frosts are rubbing it in the faces of the American people how they are expecting US to INCREASE what we pay,so that they don't have to be bothered with trifles like providing insurance for their kids.