That’s the price for a quote they got RECENTLY, with the kids pre-existing conditions. Frankly, my GUESS is that they just priced some insurance so they could be more sympathetic when they came out — I don’t see why they would be looking to buy insurance AFTER the accident, when they didn’t before the accident.
After all, now they know they have coverage under SCHIP, so why price insurance for the kids that are already covered, if not just to get an inflated number to use in your argument?
The point is the $1200 number is NOT what it would have costed for insurance before the accident.
On the other hand, the accident was horrendous. The result was devestating. And even with medical insurance through SCHIP, the family DOES have other expenses. They had to replace the car. They had to remodel the house to make it livable for the disabled child, they took out a 2nd mortgage (equity line of credit?) for that.
Taking care of the child takes time and would make it a little harder to get a new job, or to work longer hours.
Yes, the family CHOSE not to buy insurance, but we do encourage that choice — it’s the Democrats who want to take away your choice to not buy insurance. Yes, they did take our tax dollars when their choice turned out to be a bad one, but they DO SEEM to be a family that fits under the parameters of the program.
They were a lousy choice by the Democrats, if we emphasise that they are pretty well off, that the existing SCHIP program worked for them, that no expansion is needed to continue to cover them, and that it’s the DEMOCRATS that have caused them to lose their coverage, in order to hold them HOSTAGE.
“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.
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