Fat Little Babies Can't Get Insurance?

Up until yesterday, 4-month-old Alex Lange was considered uninsurable by Rocky Mountain Health Plans because he was above the 95th percentile for height and weight for his age—that gave him a pre-existing condition of obesity, and earned him a stamp of rejection.

After the Denver Post publicized the story over the weekend, the insurance company relented yesterday and issued a press release saying, “We have changed our policy, corrected our underwriting guidelines and are working to notify the parents of the infant who we earlier denied.”

The company blames the incident on the fact that individual health insurance for babies is a “relatively new process,” and that their underwriting system was flawed.

“Heavy infant in Grand Junction denied health insurance” [Denver Post via the raw story]

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