{"id":971,"date":"2009-07-21T14:13:24","date_gmt":"2009-07-21T14:13:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/07\/which-health-care-injustice-ma.html"},"modified":"2009-07-21T14:13:24","modified_gmt":"2009-07-21T14:13:24","slug":"which-health-care-injustice-ma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/07\/which-health-care-injustice-ma.html","title":{"rendered":"Pre-Existing Conditions, Pre-Existing Conditions, Pre-Existing Conditions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Religious leaders advocating for health care reform have tended to emphasize the plight of the uninsured, which surely is a great injustice.<br \/>\nBut to me, another facet is just as unjust &#8212; and politically more potent: that is, the tendency for insurance companies to deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.<br \/>\nThe ranks of the uninsured include both people who want to have insurance but cant <em>and<\/em> those who don&#8217;t want insurance &#8212; in other words, both the needy and the comfortable. By contrast, most everyone who had been turned town for coverage because of a pre-existing condition is suffering. And on a gut moral level, the idea of denying someone coverage because they are sick ranks just as high in my book as the broader argument that a just society should &#8220;cover everyone.&#8221;<br \/>\nI understand that as a practical matter, solving the pre-existing condition issue may require a broader coverage base but to me we have the cart before the horse both ethically and politically.<br \/>\nI heard Kathleen Sebelius on the Daily Show the other night and once again she was emphasizing the uninsured and &#8220;costs.&#8221;  I remain baffled as to why health care advocates don&#8217;t stress the pre-existing condition issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Religious leaders advocating for health care reform have tended to emphasize the plight of the uninsured, which surely is a great injustice. But to me, another facet is just as unjust &#8212; and politically more potent: that is, the tendency for insurance companies to deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. The ranks of the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Pre-Existing Conditions, Pre-Existing Conditions, Pre-Existing Conditions - Steven Waldman<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/07\/which-health-care-injustice-ma.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pre-Existing Conditions, Pre-Existing Conditions, Pre-Existing Conditions - Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Religious leaders advocating for health care reform have tended to emphasize the plight of the uninsured, which surely is a great injustice. But to me, another facet is just as unjust &#8212; and politically more potent: that is, the tendency for insurance companies to deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. The ranks of the&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/07\/which-health-care-injustice-ma.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-07-21T14:13:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"swaldman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Pre-Existing Conditions, Pre-Existing Conditions, Pre-Existing Conditions - Steven Waldman","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/07\/which-health-care-injustice-ma.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Pre-Existing Conditions, Pre-Existing Conditions, Pre-Existing Conditions - Steven Waldman","og_description":"Religious leaders advocating for health care reform have tended to emphasize the plight of the uninsured, which surely is a great injustice. 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He's also the author of the Founding Faith: Politics, Providence, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, which has been published by Random House. Before co-founding Beliefnet in 1999, Waldman was a political journalist, serving as National Editor of U.S. News & World Report and National Correspondent for Newsweek. 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