Joe Woods Asthma Related Death and the Family Health Insurance Planning– Cincinnati, Ohio
As you may have heard, Jovante Woods, son of former Bengals star Ickey Woods died Saturday night. He was removed from life support three days after suffering a devastating asthma attack. The school says asthma attacks are something Joe Woods struggled with throughout his life.
What a tragedy this truly is and my prayers are with this family during a very difficult time. I have read many different comments and angles to how this is being handled and thoughts from different online forums.
As a health insurance agent I have heard many sides to this story in regards to the request for donations to cover the medical costs. At first I too thought the same thing, “why someone like this would need help with medical costs due to the nature of his father’s celebrity status”, but you have to look at it from all different angles before jumping to conclusions. We don’t know the families financial situation or the reason they do not have health insurance.
Health insurance is very complex and requires you to look at every situation separately. In this particular situation, it is important to look at few things:
- Why did Joe Woods not have health insurance?
- If Joe Woods did not have health insurance, what is the reason?
- What can we learn from this?
If Joe Woods did not have health insurance it is either because he did not have a plan available through his parents employer, they had just determined that they did not want to have coverage due to the cost or Joe Woods was declined coverage when applying for an individual health insurance plan.
I personally cannot speak to the status of the family’s financial situation or the absence of a group health insurance policy through an employer, but in regards to an individual health insurance plan I have some thoughts that may have applied to Joe and his family:
- If Joe woods would have had even an acute asthma attack within the last six months he would have been declined coverage for health insurance on an individual basis. This is based on most health insurance carriers underwriting guidelines. Although technically if the child was uninsured for more than six months and had been declined by more than two carriers, he would have been eligible for guaranteed issue insurance through the Ohio high risk pool that went into place on August 1, 2010.
- If it was an income situation, Joe Woods based on the Income guidelines for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) in Ohio may have been eligible for health insurance through SCHIP if his family was within 200% of the federal poverty level.
- Another thought to take into consideration in the near future is as of September 23, 2010 Woods would have had another option. Based on the passing of the Implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) there is No discrimination against children with pre-existing conditions. The PPACA prohibits health plans from imposing pre-existing condition exclusions on children. We also expect that regulations will make clear that insurers must offer coverage to children regardless of their health status.
As you can see there are new options through the recent legislation that may have provided new opportunities for him to purchase insurance if he was unable to get it in the past. The big question is would or will a family put a health insurance plan into place in the future in order to insure against the unthinkable happening. Ultimately, it is not important whether Joe Woods had health insurance or not because even without coverage he received the care he needed and the care that he would have had with or without insurance. Health insurance is a question of whether you want to insure yourself for financial reasons and not whether you want to be able to see a doctor or go to a hospital.
God bless Joe Woods and his family. Hopefully we can all learn something from the loss.
For more information regarding small business, individual or family health insurance programs, please feel free to contact a licensed independent health insurance specialist of Chaser Insurance Group at (513)217-9491 or (877)775-4321. You can also reach an agent by email at AF@HealthInsuranceChaser.com.
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