Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/14162
Health reform payoff Owner-operators with pre-existing conditions Michele White, owner of this International ProStar, has been able to buy in to a health plan offered by her carrier. Her truck, painted to spread the gospel of preven- tive health care through cancer screening, was the lead truck in the Convoy for a Cure breast cancer event last October. White says screen- ing has saved her life five times. often have been denied health coverage. Here’s how that’s changing. BY TODD DILLS carrier. “No insurance companies would touch me,” Boy- F er says. The reason was the pre-existing conditions of his son and daughter, 12 and 9, respectively. They take medications for diagnosed bipolar disorder and other conditions that cost Boyer and his wife, Mandy, upwards of $1,000 a month without insurance. “As soon as they heard that,” Mandy says of insur- ers, “they basically just hung up.” The Boyers’ situation is not unusual. Nearly 20 percent of all owner-operators have no health insur- ance, according to Overdrive research. Nationally, as many as 15 percent are uninsurable in the private, individual policy market due to a pre-existing condi- 38 OVERDRIVE AUGUST 2010 or former leased contractor Gary Boyer, the inability to fi nd health insurance for his family wrecked his stint as an independent tion like diabetes, high blood pressure or cancer. For owner-operators in this group, help is on the way. Under the national health care reform bill passed this year, by 2014 it will be illegal for insurance companies to deny anyone coverage based on a medical condition. Until then, the bill seeks to address the long wait on pre-existing conditions by setting up a temporary nation- wide high-risk pool (HRP) through which some uninsured people will be able to obtain benefi ts as early as this month. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Ser- vices (HHS) began taking applications for coverage under the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan July 1. To be eligible, a participant must be a citizen or other legal resident who has been without cover- age for at least six months and who has a pre-existing Courtesy of Michele White