Since When is Health Insurance that Covers Pregnancy or Cancer Considered "Cadillac" Health Care????
by Lisa Codispoti, Senior Advisor
National Women’s Law Center
This post is part of a weekly series on Women and Health Reform.
There is a very dangerous concept being sold out there that “something is better than nothing” when it comes to health insurance. That is, for the uninsured, having inexpensive bare-bones coverage is better than having no coverage at all. It’s this notion that for people who can’t afford health insurance, we’ll just strip it down, cut out all those “extras” and poof! It’s affordable health coverage! This dangerous notion has most recently popped up in Florida, as the legislature there just passed legislation to allow insurers to sell bare-bones health coverage. Governor Crist said that while he realized it wasn’t “Cadillac” health care, he called it "a model for the rest of the nation” and said that it would “provide a ‘golden opportunity’ for uninsured Floridians.” This sounds more like fool’s gold to me, because bare-bones coverage could only be a golden opportunity if you never get sick; the only golden opportunity here is for the insurance industry.
While it is good that plans would cover preventative care, insurers would sell supplemental plans that cover health services for pregnancy or cancer; basically, if you want this coverage, you have to choose it and pay more. But what’s not made clear is that if you buy one of these bare-bones plans and then you actually need more extensive coverage because you get sick, all too often you can’t get it, because insurers may exclude coverage for pre-existing medical conditions. Furthermore, people who have decent health insurance could lose what they have if their small employer switches to one of these bare-bones plans.