Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I want to tell you a quick story about a woman from Atlanta. Her name is Dawn Jones. Dawn bought what is commonly referred to in the insurance industry as a short-term health insurance plan. She brought it from the Golden Rule Insurance Company, which is a unit of UnitedHealth, and she needed it because she needed some coverage in between jobs. She was then diagnosed with breast cancer, and she went through a heartbreaking experience, trying to get her insurance company to cover her for her $400,000 medical bill. In the end, she could not get her short-term health insurance plan to cover her breast cancer treatments, and here is the reason why. The insurer didn't need to cover preexisting conditions. Short-term plans do not need to cover things we traditionally think of as healthcare insurance today. The protections of the Affordable Care Act require that insurance cover you regardless of whether you are diagnosed with a serious disease, but short-term plans don't need to cover you for those things. This short-term plan didn't cover her breast cancer, despite the fact that she wasn't diagnosed with breast cancer until after she signed up for the plan. So you may ask: Why is that a preexisting condition if she wasn't diagnosed with breast cancer until she was on this short- term plan? Well, the insurer in this case made a very innovative argument. It said that she actually had the cancer before she signed up for insurance.…”