Rape victims denied insurance coverage

For example:

A 38-year-old woman in Ithaca, N.Y., said she was raped last year and then penalized by insurers because in giving her medical history she mentioned an assault she suffered in college 17 years earlier. The woman, Kimberly Fallon, told a nurse about the previous attack and months later, her doctor’s office sent her a bill for treatment. She said she was informed by a nurse and, later, the hospital’s billing department that her health insurance company, Blue Cross Blue Shield, not only had declined payment for the rape exam, but also would not pay for therapy or medication for trauma because she “had been raped before.”

From here. (Thanks, elp!)

3 thoughts on “Rape victims denied insurance coverage

  1. Lovely. The more stories I hear, the more baffled I am that anyone thought that an insurance system was the best way to provide medical care.

  2. I am a health broker, last month we had a story about the victims of domestic abuse receiving similar treatment. We actually are lobbying for a single payer system through the expansion of Medicare. This is actually the only viable solution to the rising cost of medical care. Yes it will put me out of business but the alternative is the economic decline (collapse really) of the US.

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