That Baby Should Learn About Personal Responsibility

(This post is part of my role as a blogger fellow for Brave New Films' Sick For Profit campaign)

Rocky Mountain Health Plans, an insurance company in Colorado, has denied coverage to a four month-old child on account of "obesity." How dare the kid not moderate his portions!

By the numbers, Alex is in the 99th percentile for height and weight for babies his age. Insurers don't take babies above the 95th percentile, no matter how healthy they are otherwise.

"I could understand if we could control what he's eating. But he's 4 months old. He's breast-feeding. We can't put him on the Atkins diet or on a treadmill," joked his frustrated father, Bernie Lange, a part-time news anchor at KKCO-TV in Grand Junction. "There is just something absurd about denying an infant."

Bernie and Kelli Lange tried to get insurance for their growing family with Rocky Mountain Health Plans when their current insurer raised their rates 40 percent after Alex was born. They filled out the paperwork and awaited approval, figuring their family is young and healthy. But the broker who was helping them find new insurance called Thursday with news that shocked them.

" 'Your baby is too fat,' she told me," Bernie said.

Rocky Mountain Health Plans' alibi is that as long as everybody denies coverage for a pre-existing condition, they will too.

So essentially, the insurance industry is telling this family to starve their child as the only way to get him health insurance.

That, or the baby should learn some personal responsibility and take care of himself better. Maybe push-ups.

UPDATE: A happy ending on this one. Rocky Mountain Health plans relented and will no longer consider an infant's added heft a pre-existing condition. Unfortunately, there aren't enough newspaper articles in the world to help everyone abused by the insurance industry.

The White House Vegetable Garden

I hope this starts a trend. Sustainable lifestyles are healthy lifestyles.

On Friday, Michelle Obama will begin digging up a patch of White House lawn to plant a vegetable garden, the first since Eleanor Roosevelt’s victory garden in World War II. There will be no beets (the president doesn’t like them) but arugula will make the cut.

While the organic garden will provide food for the first family’s meals and formal dinners, its most important role, Mrs. Obama said, will be to educate children about healthful, locally grown fruit and vegetables at time when obesity has become a national concern.

In an interview in her office, Mrs. Obama said, “My hope is that through children, they will begin to educate their families and that will, in turn, begin to educate our communities.”

I love the symbolism. Throughout the Presidential campaign we heard various candidates, including Obama, state that we have a disease care system, not a health care system. That's not just a function of a lack of preventive care, but the way in which Americans live and eat. In low-income communities fresh produce is often not even available. But we can plant community gardens, in a large swath of land offered by municipalities (I'm quite certain that there are a few vacant lots out there) or in individual homes. And we can move our children and ourselves to better food options. And we can, by taking that responsibility, reduce the need for the exorbitant external costs associated with obesity.

This has inspired me. I currently don't have the space for a garden, but I've been meaning to get one of those small planters on rollers to grow a few crops. Thanks, Michelle.