Life Insurance

[scaredparent]

I have a 24 mo old with undiagnosed celiac disease. He had a positive dietary change. He has been gluten-free for about 7 mo and is doing very well. But here is my question. We are getting ready to test my 7 yr old to see if she has celiac disease? My mom has chones and I told her that she should be tested and she blew up at me because she said "that I am trying to blame her for my childrens problems" she says that because she was diagnosed with chones that she can't get life insurance and I want to know is if you are diagnosed with celiac disease do you also have trouble getting life insurance? Is it better just to go with a dietary change and if you get better you know you have celiac disease if you don't then you don't have celiac disease. I don't want to make it so my children can't get life insurance be cause of a diagnoses in his medical history. Should I test my daughter or just put her on a gluten-free diet and hope for the best?

Thanks in advance

[ianm]

You bring up a good point. With our health care and insurance system looking for any reason to weed potential problem people out getting tested is not something to be taken ligthly. I have never been tested and never will because I am concerned that my insurance provider can use that against me. I was denied life insurance many years ago for another health reason once. I have not had any problems with insurance for the last few years because it has been over 5 years since that problem has occured. Celiac is something that never goes away.

[Merika]

You can always go to a different doc, pay out of pocket and get an accurate diagnosis. Then just forget to report it to the insurance company. I think an accurate diagnosis is a worthwhile pursuit, regardless of if you have it covered by insurance or not.

With kids, it is a tricky question. You don't want to screw up there insurance options (though WHY gluten-free-celiac people should be penalized is beyond me...). On the other hand, it may be really important with kids that a medical condition be marked in the doc's chart, at school, at camp, and so on. No one will listen to your child or teenager about gluten if they end up in an urgent situation, and that's assuming the kid will remember to tell them in the first place. Also, you may need proof for school reasons.....I don't know.

Merika

Also, it is my understanding that insurance companies don't care if you are "gluten-intolerant" but do care if you are "celiac". I think it's worth considering marking your official charts as gluten-intolerant, and keeping the celiac diagnosis under wraps. It IS lying, though, so decide on your own conscience

[Merika]

PS. Why is it that Americans believe the only way to access medical care is through the insurance provider? We can go to whoever we want, whenever we want. We live in a free country. We just need is the $$ to pay the doctor. Some docs even give discounts if you just pay and don't use insurance.

Merika

Ps. please don't flame that not everyone can afford, yadda yadda....not everyone can, but MOST of us as families have multiple cars, televisions, etc. It's all about priorities...

(note to scaredparent: this isn't aimed at you, it just got me thinking....)

[lovegrov]

Life insurance really should not be a problem. My doctor, who has celiac disease himself, recently increased his coverage and when I looked into it, a broker told me that if I had a negative blood test I could get increased insurance at the regular price. Other health matters cropped so I put it on the back burner.

My job provides health insurance no matter what pre-existing conditions you have so I've never had to test that, but I would think you could also get that.

richard

[jenvan]

Life insurance shouldn't be a problem. I have a policy. And remember, if you have had continual coverage and are not applying for a self-employed insurance policy, you shouldn't be denied the insurance.

You can also do one of the mail-in labs for a test also.

Does anyone actually know how much insurance companies check up on things like blood tests and if they really catch the "smaller" items, not just surgeries, heart attacks, diabetes, etc. ?

[lovegrov]

With compuetrization, they know a lot more than you think.

richard

[scaredparent]

We have insurance and the reason being that if we didn't we would spend about 6000 dollars a month alone on meds. That doesn't include dr appt. My husband only brings home about 1100 dollars a month you do the math. We could not survive with out insurance.

[drjmarkusic]

I'm a dr. and there are diagnostic codes we use which end up in a centralized data base. When HIPAA went into effect in May a few years back it sure messed some things up.

[jimbo]

I recently applied for life insurance - they did blood work beforehand and my numbers were all wacked out (I hadn't been "officially" diagnosed yet, so wasn't dieting yet). Coverage was a lot more expensive than my wifes "normal" policy, but I was told that if my next blood test comes back normal, they will re-write policy...