Today’s Wall St Journal has a follow up article to the WellPoint attack. It gives an example of what happens when you prohibit insurers from denying coverage due to preexisting conditions. The state of Michigan has a 1980 law on the books requiring nonprofit insurers to accept all applicants. Last year, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan lost $280 million prompting them to ask for a 56% rate increase. Gee, who could have seen that coming???
Posts Tagged ‘preexisting conditions’
Preexisting Conditions II.
Friday, February 19th, 2010I wrecked my car, can I get it insured?
Thursday, February 18th, 2010No sorry. You have to buy the insurance before the car is wrecked. The same is true for buying homeowners insurance after the fire. The wrecked car and the burnt house have what are called “preexisting conditions”. If the car insurance company agreed to fix uninsured cars after the wreck, they would go broke. Does anyone actually doubt this??? Yet, in Washington, they say health insurers are evil for refusing to insure after the fact for preexisting health issues. The original plan was to have a mandate for all Americans to purchase health insurance. That made sense. There would be no conditions that exist prior to owning health insurance because everyone would already own it. The insurance companies, seeing an opportunity to sell policies to the uninsured signed on. Now, the mandate is either dead, or the penalty too weak to enforce the mandate. So the insurance companies are out and we’re back to, “I wrecked my car, can I get it insured?”