The pre-existing condition exclusion that companies had in place was the problem. And that problem existedbefore Congress did anything about it.
In addition to preventing people from getting insurance in the first place, there were also problems with “recission” where people who had payed premiums for years suddenly had a medical problem, and the insurance companies scoured their records looking for any pretext whatsoever to revoke people’s health insurance policies (even for trivial reasons like not reporting acne).
What we have here is your failure to understand a basic point. You also seem to not be capable of understanding how insurance works. Why would any insurance cover something that existed before you had a policy? The whole point of insurance is the gamble that something will go wrong…not paying for something that is already wrong.
Now, that being said, the government eliminated the preexisting condition exclusion. In doing this they MUST force everyone to be covered to offset the costs incurred by people who are ill before they have insurance. This is a problem created by the government in order to address a different problem.
This is called “Adverse Selection” and is a way to game the system. I keep hearing this “not until I am sick” claim, but will that really be allowed to happen?
Every employer plan I have used and Medicare have protected themselves from “Adverse Selection” with Open Enrollment periods - if you don’t sign up during that period (usually a few weeks a year), you wait until the next period, a year later.
From my reading of the rules for the Insurance Exchanges established by the Healthcare bill, they will also use Open Enrollment periods. If that is true, waiting to buy insurance could be pretty risky. If you get sick a week after the period ends, you pay your own tab for a year.
Regarding the Individual Mandate in the new law, I’m surprised that no one has brought up the federal mandate to purchase a product that was a part of the Militia Act of 1792. According to the wiki, it required every “free able-bodied white male citizen” between the ages of 18 and 45, with a few occupational exceptions, to purchase a weapon and ammunition
I know how it works, and how it will continue to work until 2014. That’s precisely the problem I have with it; The holy free market has left millions of people without access to affordable health care. The job of the government is to step in and intervene when the free market is unable or unwilling to perform a neccesary function.
How are they intervening? By forcing private insurance companies to pay for health care for certain individuals above and beyond any premiums they will pay? By forcing individuals to purchase a product that some simply do not want? Do you really not see a problem with either of these? I suppose for you the end justifies the means.
In this case, yes. The ends justify the means. Paying for health care is just like paying for roads and bridges, fire fighters, police, lawyers for the indigent accused, and publicly funded education. It’s just part of the basic package of what a civilized society provides for its citizens. I don’t believe that any fundamental human rights are being abridged here by asking citizens to pay for these things, even those individuals that have no immediate use for those services.
… but the entire basis for insurance is to provide benefits that exceed the premiums you might pay (but others pay and never receive benefits). It is called shared risk.
If insurance benefits simply matched premiums, who would buy it in the first place?
If you look around the world, there are two models that make health insurance profitable for the insurance companies.
[ol]
[li]Limit who is insured by eliminating customers who are sick or likely to be sick - the US model[/li][li]Require that everyone have insurance - the German model since the 1880’s[/li][/ol]
Of course, only one model benefits the citizens as whole (because the risk is shared among all).