My exposure to denial or recission will end in May, 2011, when I qualify for Medicare. We early baby-boomers will strain that program, but we will have access to medical care, because we will be insured.

But what of those younger, who suffer from my - or any other - condition?

Lack of early medical care can greatly increase downstream medical costs. Particularly if lack of insurance also means lack of preventive medicine. If insurance only covers when we are already sick, we are closer to the final year of any pre-existing condition.

Absent health insurance, many do not obtain basic medical and dental care. Their lives are shortened. Their productivity limited. We lose the benefit of their work and of the taxes they would pay.

I cannot avoid my pre-existing condition. If I have insurance to cover its effects, will not I live longer and contribute more? If covered early, might not I avoid the full impact of preventable or easily treatable diseases and conditions? That’s the economic argument.

The moral argument is simpler. Those to whom we deny complete health and dental coverage are treated as less fully human than ourselves. That is a denial of the promise of this nation, which should be about more than a person’s economic value.

My condition? Human life. My death may come from a lingering disease I already have or to which I am genetically predisposed, in a car or plane crash, or as collateral damage in a driveby shooting or in a terrorist attack. Does how I die matter? For those denied health care,will not their deaths be sooner? Does any "preexisting condition" justify our hastening their deaths?