Health Care Group Calls for Better Consumer Protections

Survey Finds Most States Don't Effectively Protect People With Individual Plans

By RANDY GYLLENHAAL
June 12, 2008

Kathleen Watson of Lake City, Fla., has been on a mission to find affordable individual health care since her husband's work-based insurance plan ran out.

But during her search, Watson discovered she lives with a medical condition that has considerably hampered her efforts to find coverage. With precursor symptoms to leukemia, Watson said she was been red-flagged by insurers for not initially informing them about her condition. Now she cannot find a health insurance company to cover her that she can afford. And with a pre-existing condition, most plans won't even take her.

"I'm very frustrated," Watson said. "We've lost our savings, our 401k, I've lost my business."

"Most people who do have leukemia lymphoma get treatment right away," she said. "I haven't gotten any treatment because I don't have insurance."

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