Recently, there have been additional stories about health insurers rescinding policies and/or not paying people's medical bills, based on pre-existing conditions, often tiny and often inadvertantly and often unknown by the insured patient, being left off health insurance applications.

As I've always been kind of worried about this, especially as nowadays there are so many tests and diseases that are done to people, that might turn up a possibility of something, which your doctor might even have forgotton to mention to you, or not told you about because he thought he/she might have only frightened you about some possibility of something you can't do much about.

There is also a possibility that somethng you posted to a support group on the internet as far back as years in the past will be a known or unknown symptom of some condition, which will nab you and you will lose your insurance, or bills will be unpaid. Further, one of my worst worries is that they will find that you searched for something in Google to find out about some symptoms you were having. Google keeps your searches for a year and a half. In at least one case, search evidence has been used (to convict a person of murder), and there's no saying that it won't be used against you for a pre-existing condition recision some day.

Thus, as consumer advice, I have posted below a few relevant news stories.

Note that, I believe if you live in one of the 5 community-rated states and meet that states continuous-prior-coverage conditon when you apply for an individual comprehensive policy, you should not have to worry.

Note that the stories that I know of involve various Blue Crosses, Assurant, Wellpoint, and Golden Rule Insurance.

1) MOST DISTUBRING IS THIS STORY, on video here, where we see executives of 3 Health Insurance Companies indicating an intention to continue the practice of rescinding policies on people even when the person with the policy (and big medical bills) did not intend any misrepresentation or fraud. (The story is in the first 10 minutes of the video.)

2) CALIFORNIA INSURER (BLUE CROSS) WRITES DOCTORS ASKING THEM TO LOOK FOR UNREPORTED PRE-EXISTING-CONDITIONS IN PATIENTS (So They Don't Have to Pay Claims on Pre-existing Conditions)
See story here.

3)CONNECTICUT ATTORNEY GENERAL POSTING ABOUT ASSURANT HEALTH INSURANCE DENYING CLAIMS IN BAD FAITH, CLAIMING A PRE-EXISTING CONDITION (related to Couric Story Above):
See the story, here.