'Obese' Baby Denied Health Insurance

When four-month-old Alex Lange was born, he was a normal 8 1/4 pounds. He's been on a strictly breast milk diet since birth and is now in the 99th percentile for height and weight of babies his age. Yet Alex hasn't been able to get medical insurance because companies say he has a pre-existing condition -- obesity.

The Denver Post reports that the Lange family tried to get insurance through Rocky Mountain Health Plans after their current insurer raised their rates. But the broker who was helping them find new insurance told them, "Your baby is too fat."

Rocky Mountain Health Plans medical director Dr. Doug Speedie explained that their decision was based on current industry standards. " If health care reform occurs, underwriting will go away," he said, referring to the process that insurers go through when they decide whether to accept or deny someone for coverage. "We do it because everybody else in the industry does it."

Understandably the Langes were upset. "I could understand if we could control what he's eating. But he's 4 months old. He's breast-feeding. We can't put him on the Atkins diet or on a treadmill," Alex's father, Bernie Lange, told the Post. "There is just something absurd about denying an infant."

Alex's mother, Kelli Lange, added, "I'm not going to have him screaming because he's hungry."

The Denver Post writes that insurance companies don't accept babies for coverage if they are even in the 95th percentile for height and weight. The same goes true for adults who have a body-mass index of 30 and above. Speedie mentioned that some babies who weigh less than Alex have to get health endorsements from their doctors to qualify for coverage.

But after the story broke, Rocky Mountain announced on Monday that they "will now provide health plan coverage for healthy infants, regardless of their weight."

"A recent situation in which we denied coverage to a heavy, yet healthy, infant brought to our attention a flaw in our underwriting system for approving infants," said Steve ErkenBrack, president and CEO of Rocky Mountain Health Plans. "We have changed our policy, corrected our underwriting guidelines and are working to notify the parents of the infant who we earlier denied."

But for many, the story underscored why the country needs health insurance reform. Tracy Allerton wrote on Examiner.com , "Yes, we absolutely do need health-care reform -- starting with some reality-checks and common-sense thinking. I mean, really, obesity is a ridiculous diagnosis in a 4-month-old!"

"Certainly, families cannot alter the genetic makeup of their babies -- nor should they change a baby's doctor-recommended diet, letting him go hungry in order to drop a few pounds," wrote Sarah Gilbert on WalletPop.com . "The risk-averse approach to health insurance coverage ends up leaving families out in the streets, for no reason other than a company's fear of having to pay for that family to live healthily, and free of the crushing weight of medical debts.

"It's a clear result of the mindlessness of actuarial tables and insidious in its undercurrent of selectivity. Rationing health care? We've got it right here. Only the healthy (according to the obviously insufficient charts) have any right to health."