Because It Isn't Their Life.

I'm a perfect example of this bias. I contracted rheumatic fever when I was six years old. It was undiagnosed. I reached adulthood and then found out I had a damaged heart.

I take a very expensive brand name drug which I cannot substitute with a generic, because there isn't one available, yet.

In applying for drug coverage with our new supplemental health insurance company, I found out that I will have to pay $92.00 per month for a drug that I must take. This prescription controls anxiety.

It has been proven medically those chronically ill patients, due to underlying health worries are affected by anxiety. These people suffer more problems physically for which they are justified. It's part of the ironic nature of dealing with a lifelong illness. We are always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Now, logic tells me that if I end up in the hospital suffering from an irregular heartbeat due to money worries, my health insurance will pay more for my hospitalization than they would if they gave me a break on my co-pay so I could easily afford my anxiety medication.

Insurance companies, therefore, are willing to play the odds, because it isn't their life. If it saves the company a few bucks in the short run then it's worth it to them.

However, here's the good part. While applying for our new coverage, we found out that our future company would not refuse us for preexisting medical problems, unless we were diagnosed with renal failure. That would definitely have happened if parts of the President's National Healthcare bill would not have been enforced soon after passing.

You can bet that all the actuary trolls are scratching their pointy little heads trying to find ways around this conundrum. Meanwhile the health industry is down on its knees praying for the Supreme Court to dump "Obama Care" in its entirety. Then the insurance companies can get back to being the cynical agents they've been since their very inception, centuries ago.

*The author worked for two years with a British based insurance company in their underwriting and claims departments. This very same company wrote the products' liability on the tea shipment that went into the Boston Harbor in 1775. This company has existed since the eighteenth century.