Why This Matters: A Colorado Story

Via the Boulder Daily Camera: Jennifer Latham is a Colorado preschool teacher with four children, who suffered multiple, debilitating injuries when she was hit by a car in 2005. She spent two months in the hospital recovering, running up $185,000 in medical expenses. She was lucky to have health insurance.

Or so Latham thought. Shortly after coming home, the insurer, Time Insurance Co., told her that it was refusing to pay the bill and that it would be canceling her coverage outright. The reason? When applying for her insurance coverage, the insurer said, she'd failed to disclose two past medical incidents--an emergency room visit for shortness of breath and an episode of uterine prolapse. Not only did that leave her on the hook for $185,000; it also left her without insurance, since no private carrier would touch her after the injuries and cancellation.