Domestic violence as pre-existing condition? 8 states still allow it

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/76477.html?storylink=omni_popular

Posted on Sunday, October 4, 2009
By Les Blumenthal | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON -- Eight states and the District of Columbia don't have laws that specifically bar insurance companies from using domestic violence as a pre-existing condition to deny health coverage, according to a study from the National Women's Law Center.

The states are Idaho, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Wyoming. The study by the nonpartisan, nonprofit center focused on individual coverage, not group coverage.

Some of the states, particularly North Carolina, argue that other statutes on their books address the issue.

At least one of the health care bills circulating in Congress includes a specific federal prohibition on the use of domestic violence as a pre-existing condition. Other bills include blanket bans on pre-existing conditions.

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"This is insane," said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who's been trying to convince Congress to address the issue for roughly a decade.

Murray said she couldn't remember exactly when she first learned of it, but sometime in the 1990s she recalls a private conversation she had with a woman who broke down as she explained that she couldn't flee an abusive relationship because her children were covered under her husband's health care plan and she couldn't get her own. Another woman told Murray that she didn't report that she'd been battered because she feared losing her coverage.

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Murray remembers three years ago when the then-Republican-controlled Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee blocked her effort to impose a federal prohibition on a 10-10 vote. All 10 who voted against her amendment were Republicans.

"Clearly, the insurance industry influenced that vote," Murray charged.

The Republicans who voted against the measure had received nearly $6 million in campaign contributions from insurance companies, health care providers, the pharmaceutical industry and health care product manufacturers in the years leading up the vote, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks campaign contributions.

The 10 Republican senators included North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr, Georgia Sen. Johnny Isakson and Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts.