10 day baby denied health coverage

[BIGE]

Houston Tracy is just 10 days old, but the little boy has already lived through trying times.

"He was born with what's called transposition of the great arteries." his father, Doug Tracy said. "It's heart wrenching; I hated it."

The congenital heart defect causes the two major vessels that carry blood away from the heart to become switched.

It's a condition rarely detected before birth.

"My whole pregnancy was simple, it was easy, no complications, doctor visits were great," Houston's mother, Kim Tracy said, "perfect sonograms, great little pictures and then, he wasn't perfect."

The baby was rushed to Cook Children's Medical Center in Fort Worth where he had life-saving surgery.

"He's doing really good," his mother said with a smile, "he's a little tough guy."

While baby Houston is fighting for recovery, his parents found themselves in another battle: Fighting the insurance company, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas.

The Tracy's are both small business owners and do not carry health insurance for themselves. They do carry insurance on their two other children and tried to get insurance for Houston, but they found out Wednesday his coverage was denied.

"They kept saying it's preexisting, it's preexisting, but I don't know how it can be preexisting on a baby that was just born." his father said. "If it's mandated that everyone have health insurance, than how can one be denied?"

Blue Cross and Blue Shield can't comment on the family's situation, but did comment about the health care reform law, and how it may affect coverage.

"We will work closely with our customers to keep them informed of any changes that may result from the new law," said Margaret Jarvis, the company's Senior Manager of Media Relations. "We will continue to review the bill's requirements on our business and their respective time frames to ensure full compliance."

While the Tracy's said they'll do whatever it takes for their baby, they have no idea at what cost.

SMH!!

[BLAIR]

I feel for the lady. I really do, but she is the one at fault. If she had health insurance on herself, it wouldve extended to the baby.  She messed up by not doing the responsible thing and getting herself insured.   

Now shes wanting to politicize it so hopefully someone will take care of her screwup.  She knew the risks getting in this, and decided to go in without health coverage. Now she gets to pay for all the medical bills of the child out of pocket.  No hospital will ever deny neonatal care, the mom and dad are just gonna have to make a payment plan and pay it off.

WHAA IT'S ALWAYS SOMEONE ELSE'S FAULT!!!

[Russyo]

yup.  I have to agree, its people in THAT situation that are the entire reason for this health care BS Obama is pushing on us!

[BLAIR]

yup.  I have to agree, its people in THAT situation that are the entire reason for this health care BS Obama is pushing on us!

I'm all for helping the helpless, but  I'm all against helping the clueless.

[StacyLeah]

Medicaid FTW

[ArmedTrigger01]

That is very true if she had been insured it would not have been preexisting because they had insured the baby while in the womb now they have the option to opt out of covering the baby because they were not insuring the child prior to discovering the condition