Sarah Palin's Comment Makes No Sense
My wife and I had a few scares during our pregnancy, and there was worry that our baby was going to have health problems. I thank God that everything turned out fine on his day of birth. But the possibility of having a child born needing special care is something I've spent a lot of time thinking about. I have a combination of tremendous sympathy and profound respect for parents of children with health difficulties. Sarah Palin is one such parent. However, I don't understand how she could have made such a mistaken and backward statement, when she suggested that health care reform would result in decisions being made to deny care to disabled children like her own.
Here is why:
Under the present-day US health care system, parents of kids in need of extensive medical care cannot purchase health insurance on the open market. Private insurers deny coverage to babies like Sarah Palin's Trig. Let me be clear: there is no free market solution to this problem. In the free market, it is not rational for a private insurer to offer coverage to a disabled child.
I encourage you to read the story of Sophie, a child in need of expensive medical treatment. Her parents were unable to buy insurance for her. Now they must make sure they remain poor enough to qualify for Medicaid--the only insurance that will cover Sophie. Medicaid is, of course, a government-run insurance program.
I see only two ways to ensure that disabled children are covered by health insurance. One is to have a government-run program to provide it, sort of a Medicaid for all (not just the poor). Two is to regulate the private insurers to prohibit denial of coverage. In fact both of these things are in the Democratic reform bill currently stalled in Congress. This is the reform that Sarah Palin attacked, claiming it would result in denial of coverage disabled kids. She's somehow gotten it competely reverse.
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