Christopher Reeve's lifetime insurance cap:
"Last month, he sent a letter to all the United States Senators asking for support on another health-care issue, one he became aware of, to his great chagrin, while he was a patient at the Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation in New Jersey. For the first time, his wife read the fine print on his health insurance policy, which he had bought through a union when he was a television actor, and learned that he had a lifetime cap of $1.2 million in benefits. With his care costing $400,000 a year, his benefits were suddenly inadequate.
He was not alone. About 60 percent of employer-sponsored health plans have lifetime caps, he learned, with $1 million the industry standard. Each year about 1,500 people exhaust their benefits with little choice but to spend their assets until, impoverished, they turn to Medicaid.
"Every day much of the discussion in the halls of Kessler would be about insurance," Mr. Reeve said. A paralyzed construction worker had to sell his house, he said. Others faced invading the money they had saved for their children's educations.
n his letter to lawmakers, Mr. Reeve asked for support for a proposal by Senator James H. Jeffords, Republican of Vermont, to raise lifetime caps to $10 million. The measure, which Senator Jeffords plans to introduce during a floor debate scheduled for April 18, is opposed by insurance companies and employers' groups, who say it will amount to a costly shackle on business. Supporters of raising the caps point to a study by the American Academy of Actuaries, which found that insurance premiums would rise only about $8 a year for each covered adult.
"It's simply inaccurate in my opinion that employers can't afford it," Mr. Reeve said. "It would not be a hardship to them economically, and it would be the right thing to do."
But even supporters of the $10 million cap admit that, because of Senate politics, their cause is a long shot.
Mr. Reeve does not pretend that he might soon have to sell his own house. He anticipates that he will be able to make a good living even after his insurance is gone. In January, Random House agreed to pay him a $3 million advance for a book about his recovery. Last week, he was cast as the voice of King Arthur in a Warner Brothers animated feature, "The Quest for Camelot." And he has found a place on the lucrative circuit of elite motivational speakers. He has booked about a dozen speaking dates through the end of the year, at fees of $50,000 to $60,000 each.
"This insurance fight is not so much for me," Mr. Reeve said. "It's for the people down the hall from me at Kessler who are desperate and became my friends over the seven months I was there."
Mr. Reeve said that once his primary insurance policy runs out in two years, he has another policy that should last for three more years.
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