Healthcare Limitations

With everyone battling in Washington over the fate of the Health care bill, and the massive amount of changes that its had done to it, there isn't a lot of coverage over fine detail too long. One such, until recently, undiscussed detail of the bill is that it has had a loophole amended to it, allowing coverage to have specific annual spending limitations for carriers of serious disease of the likes of cancer.

As it stands now, the Senate Democratic health bill would allow insurance companies to place annual limits of coverage in dollar value unless those limits could been defined as "unreasonable". The term "unreasonable" currently remains undefined in the bill and as such, will be delegated for administrative figures to make the decision at the time of need. To make matters even more confusing, this clause was added under the section of the 2,074 page bill, titled "No Lifetime or Annual Limits".

This recent has observation has sent the American Cancer Society into an uproar. Stephen Finan, a policy expert with cancer society's advocacy affiliate, voiced serious concern over the matter.

"The primary purpose of insurance is to protect people against catastrophic loss," Finan said. "If you put a limit on benefits, by definition it's going to affect people who are dealing with catastrophic loss." The cost of cancer treatment can exceed $100,000 a year."

On top of that, legislation passed summer, blatantly stating that limitations such as these are to be banned under any circumstances, was tweaked recently to allow this to be acceptable.

The senate has responded to the outcry from the Cancer Society, stating that there will be no annual limits or anything like it by finalization of the bill. The Cancer Society remains steadfast in position of having the limits actively removed because they believe that if its not removed now, revision will never occur and, upon being pressed for time, will be completed and passed, leaving the limits intact.