This is another great example of why we needed, and still need more, health care reform. It still irks me that Democrats, and our groups, didn't do more to push these kind of horror stories. I know that if I ever moved back home to take care of my parents, we they ever to need it, I'd lose my health insurance because I moved states. And then just guess who's going to want to insure me with my bad eye, asthma, etc.
From the NYT:
Ever since Thomas DeLorenzo was accepted to three law schools outside his home state of California, he has spent entire days on the phone with health insurers in other states, compiling information that he enters on a giant spreadsheet.
Mr. DeLorenzo, who has AIDS, will lose his health coverage in California if he moves out of state. To replace it, he has found policies that seem to promise comprehensive coverage, but actually cover only catastrophic events like car crashes and major surgery. One plan looked attractive but did not cover the drugs he needed. Most of the prescription drug formulas were so complicated, it was hard to make sense of them.
“Everyone keeps asking me why I haven’t made a decision about law school, but I can’t because I don’t have a decision about health care,” said Mr. DeLorenzo, 47, of Los Angeles. “There are policies out there to be purchased, but there’s usually a catch. You have to pick each one apart.”
One of the most publicized aspects of the new health care act is a ban — starting in 2014 — on refusing coverage to people like Mr. DeLorenzo because of a pre-existing condition like AIDS.
