re: #131 EmmmieG

Did you see the front page of the Oregonian?

As of today, most of the big insurers in Oregon will no longer offer child-only plans.

It’s the pre-existing condition thing. Kids have a. accidents and b. major diseases.

You can’t buy insurance after a broken arm, but you could buy one for a kid with cancer.

So now, you can’t buy the coverage at all. Some reform. The new law creates a setting in which any insurance company that tries to offer such coverage will be ruined by the phenomenon of “adverse selection”. This is bad for people, but maybe it helps win elections because the insurance companies, as they try to escape the ruin that awaits them in the normal course of events, can be demonized.

Now I know that some insurance companies deserve scorn. The practice of revoking coverage on pretexts, the moment somebody who’s been paying their premiums falls seriously ill, is unconscionable. But it’s also illegal. It’s plain old fraud. Why do we need new laws, when we could simply enforce the old ones?