Most babies are chubby, and have baby fat. Even taking that into account, this kid is fatter than 99% of other babies. I understand that baby fat is different, but you can always have too much of a good thing, and I don't find it at all hard to believe that being one of the fattest babies on the planet has significant health risks. Whether I believe it or not though, doesn't matter. The insurance company does, and has data to back it up. The company doesn't just hate kids, or extra revenue. Their data shows that babies of this one's size are too risky to insure. Without seeing the data and determining its validity, no one in this thread can really make the argument that it was stupid for this company not to insure the child.



Agreed, it doesn't sound like it's their fault, and I don't think there's much they can do. Who says they have to be able to do anything though? If someone dying of lung cancer tried to get insurance, he wouldn't be able to, in spite of not being able to do anything about the condition causing him to be denied. Insurance is a gamble, and you won't get anyone to bet on you if the outcome is clear, or if their odds of winning are excessively long. To say that someone should be covered even in these situations moves into the realm of straight up sponsored health care, not insurance.

Why? Because insurance works by having tiered rate plans. If you're in a group that costs the company less, you pay less. If your odds of being expensive are greater, you pay more. At a certain risk/cost point, though, there aren't enough people who can and will pay the expense. At that cutoff it doesn't make sense to offer insurance any more, so the company denies coverage to those people. In a sponsored health care system you might have the same kind of tiered plans at first, but once you reach the cutoff, you spread the extra cost that people can't pay to the other members of the plan. When someone can't take care of themselves, you force other people to take care of them, whether they want to or not.

There's obviously a big difference between the two. Regardless of which approach you think is "right," the fact is that saying an insurance company should cover someone just because they can't fix their pre-existing condition would ruin them. They wouldn't really be an insurance company any more.



It's not a bad business model at all, it's a safe one. Virtually all businesses mimic the practices of successful rivals / predecessors. Trying something new is always a big risk. Sometimes those that do it hit it big, but more times than not, new ideas fail. It's safe to stick with what you know works. You might well be right that an insurance company that approved most people that others denied would make a lot of money. The majority of insurers don't think so, however, and I don't see how you can call it stupid to agree with them.