Pre Existing Conditions

I hate the cliche, but when it comes to health insurance and how Democrats veiw it, there is a real "disconnect."

Lately, there has been a lot of emphasis on the aspect of Obamacare that would prohibit insurance companies from charging higher rates, or denying coverage to an applicant who has a pre-existing medical condition. Of course this has been the practice for years, and according to my concept of insurance, a perfectly reasonable and sane business practice. If insurance companies allowed you to get covered after you get sick, then nobody would ever buy insurance until they were sick. Now everybody understands that would not work for insurance companies economically. They would only get premiums from people who were simultaneously making much larger claims than the amount they are paying in. They would have a permanent and fixed, negative cash flow.

Again, everybody understands how this works and why it must be this way, even liberals! But in their never ending quest to feel better about themselves and what they are doing for (to) the world, liberals cannot see how this plays out. Well allow me to point them in the general direction.

Liberals think that the mandate is what allows them to dictate the rules. If everybody has to buy insurance, they reason, then nobody can wait until they are sick before getting coverage. So now they think they've gotten around all the consequences, right? But when insurance companies got to exclude coverage based on a pre-exuisting condition, then they also got to dodge paying for that illness going forward. Now they can't. So how's that going to work? Well let's see, where do insurance companies get their money? Premiums, of course, but you've just made it illegal to charge the sick guy more, what are you going to do? Oh, I see, just charge eveybody more, what could be simpler?