WITH over 3,500 cases of swine flu in the Kingdom and with the number expected to rise substantially in the next couple of weeks as Haj gets under way, people want assurance that they will get rapid and effective treatment if they become infected. The government is trying its best in the face of a virus that is no respecter of borders, and last month Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah ordered that swine flu victims should be treated at state expense in either government or private hospitals. The same, unfortunately, cannot be said of certain medical insurance companies. It has been reported that some are refusing to pay swine flu victims’ medical bills on the grounds that the illness is a case of “force majeure” — that, like lightning or volcanoes or earthquakes, is beyond the normal course of events and therefore not covered.
Such a stance is disgusting. Insurance companies are, of course, businesses and no one objects to their making profits. Indeed they would be out of business if they did not and we would all be worse off with no one to pay our medical bills. But they are not in business to cheat and fiddle — and that is what is going on here. Some insurance companies (by no means all) are trying to renege on their contractual responsibilities. This is dishonest and they must not be allowed to get away with it. Swine flu is a medical condition, a virus. It is not an earthquake or a lighting bolt — and responsible insurance companies do not refuse to pay up in the event of such catastrophes. Indeed, they pay because they have integrity and because they are covered themselves through reinsurance schemes.
People buy out medical insurance in good faith, having been told they will be covered in the event of an illness. There are exclusions, such as HIV/AIDS or pre-existing conditions, but swine flu fits into neither of these categories. People have paid their premiums and have every right to expect coverage if they fall victim to swine flu. The insurance companies are themselves covered through reinsurance schemes; they have to be. They can afford to pay out — and must be made to do so. What they cannot be allowed to do is pick and choose which diseases they are going to cover after people have become infected. That is deceitful. If they refuse to cover certain diseases and medical conditions, they must list them so that people can choose whether to insure with them.
This behavior has to be dealt with immediately and severely by the authorities. The offending companies should be told to provide the coverage they promised. Otherwise, before we know it, there will be other illnesses that suddenly are not covered. The behavior of banks in the financial crisis is a lesson to be kept in mind; they did what they did because no one objected until it was too late. What is perhaps most astounding about these unscrupulous companies’ stance is the damage they do themselves. Do they not realize they are destroying their customers’ trust? Such behavior is bound to make people question whether they are insured with the right company or whether they should put their money with a more reliable one.
Unemployment rate
THE following editorial appeared in The Washington Post on Monday:
We Americans honor work. We respect and revere working people. It’s just that sometimes we have a funny way of showing it. The New World, both North and South America, was built on the labor of millions, but many of them were uncompensated, coerced or captured, and were driven to and beyond the limits of their endurance.
Long after the enslavement of African and native peoples was outlawed and the indentured servitude of European immigrants ended, many workers and the people who worked them continued in arrangements such as sharecropping and sweatshop labor that were but a small step upward.
Even today contempt for the work of others is shown in derisive comments about “burger flippers” and in popular movies about doofuses in unskilled jobs. Undocumented immigrants are seen by many as soaking up benefits, while the work they do is often ignored, even though it’s visible every day, in thousands of places.
All of which is not to say that the American ideal of a free people advancing their fortunes and their country’s through their work has been betrayed. It has, however, had its ups and downs, and today many workers are seeing a down side. A 10th of the working population is looking for employment, and many others are in jobs that fail to match their skills or expectations. As the economy recovers, unemployment remains high. The question is raised whether the open and interconnected world economy that has long been the foundation of American prosperity and progress can continue to provide the jobs that sustain the country and hold it together.
There is often a pretty close correlation between the fortunes of a presidency and the unemployment rate. That fact should help concentrate some minds in Washington, especially in view of the possibility that we are facing a new long-term situation of joblessness and underemployment.
That prospect, and the problem of growing inequality in wealth and wages, requires hard thinking and hard choices. It will not respond to constituency politics or efforts to make the other guy look bad. It’s the biggest task ahead on this Labor Day.
