Will my health insurance cost go up if I test positive for an STD?

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 21:04:25 -0800

Can your health insurance company raise your rates when you have a positive STD test? Does this typically happen? Long story short, I recently had the occasion to need an STD screening really fast, like by-the-end-of-the-day-please fast (basically I had another date with the um... relevant person and I wanted to be able to say something concrete about the situation instead of just general ickyness).

I anticipated that I'd end up at a planned parenthood or something, but it turned out that the only thing I could find near my work was an express testing service that sends you straight to a lab for all the screenings, no doctor consult or anything. When I asked the guy on the phone about whether they would take insurance, he went off unprovoked about how messed up health care is in this country, and I COULD tell my insurance, but they'd probably double my premiums if I tested positive because they would consider me high risk, and "it's not fair, but that's how it is."

Is this true? I have health insurance through work, and I never had an entrance physical or anything like that, I just got the standard rate for a person of my general demographic characteristics.

The whole ordeal just kind of smelled funny. The price for the lab work was pretty expensive, but not beyond my means, so I just paid for it. I'm OK with the idea that I got ripped off this time; I did need the service, it didn't break the bank, whatever. But I'm curious if they guy had a point or was just completely full of it.

Web searching reveals nothing helpful, at least using the search strings I could think of.

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Will my health insurance cost go up if I test positive for an STD?