A Little Insurance Policy For The Future

Well, if the major insurance companies were trying to avoid being so reviled that the public demands government action to control them, they're failing miserably.

Some of the country's most prominent health insurance companies have decided to stop offering new child-only plans, rather than comply with rules in the new health-care law that will require such plans to start accepting children with preexisting medical conditions after Sept. 23.

The companies will continue to cover children who already have child-only policies. They will also accept children with preexisting conditions in new family policies.

Nonetheless, supporters of the new health-care law complain that the change amounts to an end run around one of the most prized consumer protections.

"We're just days away from a new era when insurance companies must stop denying coverage to kids just because they are sick, and now some of the biggest changed their minds," Ethan Rome, executive director of Health Care for America Now, an advocacy group, said in a statement. "[It] is immoral, and to blame their appalling behavior on the new law is patently dishonest."

Three insurers - WellPoint, Cigna and CoventryOne - all cited uncertainty in the health insurance market for their decisions. That incertitude and the resulting decision of other insurers to drop their child-only plans, according to WellPoint spokeswoman Kristin Binns, "has created an unlevel competitive environment." 

I expect more insurers to follow suit.  Profit motive and health care are fundamentally incompatible.  In other words, these insurers will simply refuse to issue policies that cover kids with pre-existing conditions, requiring a family plan instead.

Obama will be blamed for this by the short-sighted.  More realistic people will see this is a conscious choice by the health insurance industry to cut health care reforms because they don't like them, and that these insurers would rather see these kids die than provide them health care.  It really is that simple.

And let's not kid ourselves:  it's not like it was possible for kids with pre-existing conditions to get health insurance before these reforms became law anyway.

But hey, they want to put themselves out of business, fine with me.