CARNAL NATION

Under the current system of health care, getting raped is a good reason for insurance companies to deny you coverage. That seems to be the lesson of this piece by Danielle Ivory of the Huffington Post Investigative Fund. Ivory writes about the case of Christina Turner, who woke up bruised and cut by the roadside after two men slipped her a knockout drug. Because there was a strong possibility that she had been raped, her doctor prescribed a month's supply of anti-AIDS drugs as a safety measure. Turner never became HIV-positive, but as a result of those drugs, she did become uninsurable. When she lost her health insurance a few months later and went shopping for a new carrier, she was told that having taken the anti-AIDS drugs made her too much of a risk to insure. If she was still AIDS-free in three years, she might be reconsidered as eligible for insurance.

According to Ivory, as striking as Turner's story is, it's not unusual. Insurance companies also routinely deny care to sexual assault survivors on the grounds that they have "pre-existing conditions" such as post-traumatic stress disorder or STIs. But, as in Turner's case, even the potential exposure to HIV is enough to disqualify a woman from getting coverage. Carol Holtzman, an expert in medical billing, says that for anyone who's ever taken anti-HIV drugs, the standard industry reply is "an automatic no." Forensic nurse Diana Faugno says "It's difficult enough to make sure that rape victims take the drugs. What are we supposed to tell women now? Well, I guess you have a choice—you can risk your health insurance or you can risk AIDS. Go ahead and choose."

Even for women who have insurance, getting treatment in the wake of a sexual assault can be extremely difficult, thanks to increasingly aggressive attempts at "cost containment" by insurance companies and HMOs, as the following video by Ivory and Lagan Sebert shows:

This bizarre relationship that the insurance companies have with women who need medical care is underscored by the case of Peggy Robertson, who was denied insurance by United Health Care's Golden Rule Insurance because she'd delivered her son by a C-section. She was given an option, though: Golden Rule said that they would reconsider her eligibility if she got sterilized. Robertson tells her story in the ABC News segment below.