Woman Denied Health Coverage After Rape

A woman was denied health insurance after it was determined she might have a pre-existing condition as a result of being raped.

The Huffington Post reports that Christina Turner, 45, decided to take anti-HIV medicine after she woke up on a roadside with cuts and scrapes, indicating she may have been raped by two men who slipped a drug in a drink. Months after the incident when she needed to apply for new health insurance, she was denied because she had been taking anti-HIV drugs.

Ironically enough Turner used to be a health insurance underwriter. Despite her best efforts to explain to the insurance company how she had been assaulted, the company denied her coverage and told her she might be able to get coverage in three or more years if she could prove she was still free of AIDS.

Turner told the Huffington Post she is now wondering if she made the right decision in taking the anti-HIV drugs in the first place. "I'm going to be penalized my whole life because of this," she said.

Cindy Holtzman, an insurance agent and expert in medical billing, said that HIV-positive people are marked has having a pre-existing condition and therefore denied coverage. The fact that Turner was taking anti-HIV drugs made her ineligible in companies' minds, even if she tests negative for the virus.

Those who deal with victims of sexual assault say it's difficult enough to get rape victims to take their drugs. "What are we supposed to tell women now?" asked Diana Faugno, a forensic nurse and board director of End Violence Against Women International. "Well, I guess you have a choice -- you can risk your health insurance or you can risk AIDS. Go ahead and choose."

Dr. Lawrence Nardozzi, medical director at Magellan Behavioral Health Services Inc., one of the nation's largest managed care companies, denied routinely turning down victims of sexual assault.

"We're not denying care. We are exercising our responsibility to make sure that medical necessity is met," he said. "I think the process works well."

Turner's story is just one of many to emerge recently involving people who have been turned down for what's been labeled as pre-existing conditions. This week 2-year-old Aislin Bates was in the news after she was denied coverage for being too skinny . UnitedHealthcare turned her down because she doesn't meet the insurer's standards for height and weight of a girl her age. Doctors have said that Bates who is 22 pounds is perfectly healthy and that her small size is because of her genes.

Last week the story of 4-month-old Alex Lange sparked outrage when he was turned down for being too "obese." Alex has been on a strictly breast milk diet and is in the 99th percentile for height and weight of babies his age. Yet his insurer, Rocky Mountain Health Plans, said he had the pre-existing condition of obesity. After the story broke, Rocky Mountain announced that they "will now provide health plan coverage for healthy infants, regardless of their weight."