First, a social activist discovers the difficulty in maintaining individual health insurance while moving from state to state. http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2011/08/16/have-individual-health-insurance-policy-preexisting-conditions-want-move-good-luck. I recently encountered a similar difficulty, and I wasn’t even moving: my previous employer’s health insurance was in another state. Even though the carrier was a national one – THE one – I wasn’t able to convert my group insurance to an individual plan because that other state didn’t owe me anything as a non-resident, and my state didn’t owe me anything because I hadn’t had a group plan in my state. I am now on a high-deductible individual plan, hoping like hell none of my family’s pre-existing conditions will kick in until six months go by. Great strategy, isn’t it?

Second, and also quite applicable to me: “Insured While Fat.” http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2011/09/insured-while-fat.html. The author of this post is at least fortunate, if you can call it that, to be employed by a company that offers insurance. Fat people on the individual market often find it impossible to buy health insurance, simply by virtue of being fat. This is nothing new, and Marilyn Wann of FatSO? has written eloquently about it. Regardless of what the medical world and the general public think of fat people and their health risks (and there is considerable data suggesting that those risks, while certainly present, have been vastly overstated and the conclusions are tainted by ties between research and corporations profiting from weight-loss services), I cannot see how refusing to insure fat people accomplishes any health goals at all. This dilemma would make a striking portrait, in my opinion.

Thanks for doing what you do!