Did Romney Stay Employed by Bain to Keep His Health Insurance? [View all]

[Cali_Democrat]

By David Callahan
Posted: 07/17/2012 3:54 pm

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There are any number of reasons why Romney might not have wanted to sever his ties with Bain. But here's one that nobody has yet explored: So his wife, Ann, would not lose her health insurance as she battled with multiple sclerosis.

Put another way, was Mitt Romney -- for all his millions -- effectively "job locked" at Bain by a broken health insurance system that might have made it impossible to find coverage for Ann Romney if Mitt lost his insurance through Bain?

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Ann Romney became ill with multiple sclerosis in 1998, a year before her husband went to work for SLOC. Given her condition, it could have been very difficult for the Romneys to get health insurance through whatever insurer was covering SLOC employees. Utah, with its conservative regulatory climate, was not a place you wanted to try to get health insurance with a pre-existing condition. In 1999, the state had no laws stopping health insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions or mandating that such people be offered an alternative insurance choice. (As of 2008, only five states had laws mandating that insurers sell policies to all who apply and fewer then ten states said that alternatives had to be available, according to a study by Families USA.)

Like most states, Utah allowed insurers to charge the customers they did accept any premiums they wanted and discriminate in their rates against less healthy customers. Still, it's hard to see why any insurer would have accepted Ann Romney as a customer, given the high costs of treating MS -- even in its mild forms.

In short, it's perfectly possible -- indeed likely -- that Ann Romney would not have been able to get any health insurance at all in Utah.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-callahan/romney-bain-health-insurance_b_1677821.html