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Are Insurers Playing Fair With HIV Patients?

By Todd Campbell | More Articles | Save For Later
July 20, 2014 | Comments (0)

A new complaint claims that insurers may be flouting a key provision of the Affordable Care Act that prevents discrimination. As part of health-care insurance reform, this provision prevents insurers from denying coverage or pricing their plans based on pre-existing conditions.

The goal of the provision is noble in that it aims to insure hundreds of thousands of patients that were inadequately covered, or rejected, by insurers previously; however, insurers facing looming costs may be inadvertently steering patients with life threatening disease like HIV away from plans.

In May, Tampa based The AIDS Institute (TAI) filed a complaint with the Department of Health and Human Services stating that silver plans (those most commonly chosen) offered by Aetna's (NYSE: AET  ) CoventryHealth, Cigna  (NYSE: CI  ) , and Humana (NYSE: HUM  ) in Florida ostensibly sought to reduce the number of applicants with HIV by requiring "inordinately high co-payments and co-insurance for medications."