Rape Called a Pre-Existing Condition

This is a disturbing story. It's the story of a woman who made the choice, after being raped, of taking anti-AIDS medication for a month, as a precautionary step. Little did she know it would scar her for life, in the minds of insurance underwriters.

Consider that choice: HIV / AIDS or health insurance? Consider also, that in most industrialized nations, that choice does not have to be made. Why should the victim of a rape be made to suffer again?

The Huffington Post Investigative Fund has the story of Christina Turner, now 45. Slipped a "Mickey," and fearing she had been sexually assaulted outside a bar in Fort Lauderdale, FL, she took anti-HIV drugs as a precaution. Despite the fact that she never developed HIV, the mere taking of the drugs flagged her as too high a risk, and she has been rejected by many insurance companies.

Turner had let the men buy her drinks at a bar in Fort Lauderdale. The next thing she knew, she said, she was lying on a roadside with cuts and bruises that indicated she had been raped. She never developed an HIV infection. But months later, when she lost her health insurance and sought new coverage, she ran into a problem.

Turner, 45, who used to be a health insurance underwriter herself, said the insurance companies examined her health records. Even after she explained the assault, the insurers would not sell her a policy because the HIV medication raised too many health questions. They told her they might reconsider in three or more years if she could prove that she was still AIDS-free. [...]

Some women have contacted the Investigative Fund to say they were deemed ineligible for health insurance because they had a pre-existing condition as a result of a rape, such as post traumatic stress disorder or a sexually transmitted disease. Other patients and therapists wrote in with allegations that insurers are routinely denying long-term mental health care to women who have been sexually assaulted.

I recently ran a story about an underweight baby denied health insurance; there was also a recent story of a baby deemed overweight by an insurance company that was also denied health insurance.

His father, Bernie Lange, told a Colorado newspaper, "I could understand if we could control what he's eating. But he's 4 months old. He's breast-feeding. We can't put him on the Atkins diet or on a treadmill. There is just something absurd about denying an infant."