Does anyone know how we started using the bizarre phrase “pre-existing conditions”?

Feels like it might be a @FrankLuntz creation.

You realize other people in the world don’t talk about health that way, right?

In other places, it’s simply a person’s MEDICAL HISTORY.

We need to stop letting corporations who want to deny us medical care in order to increase profits frame the narrative.

We need to stop using their vocabulary.

Medical treatment is an issue of life or death, not contract law.

Healthcare is a right. Period.

#HealthcareForAll

I do know and can tell you the origin of another nasty phrase we now take for granted—because it changed during the course of my career:

“Behavioral health” began replacing “mental health” when “managed care” replaced “fee for service” insurance coverage.

Want to know why?

1/x

“Behavioral health” replaced “mental health”

because insurance corporations wanted observable indicators to use to deny continued payment if their measurements showed no improvement

AND

because they wanted to tie treatment to functionality and detach it from SUFFERING.

2/2

In other words, your treatment became “managed” to ensure you could behave within normal limits (WNL) and function as a student or a worker.

Whether or not you were suffering was considered irrelevant in this perspective, unless you were a potential danger.