[Free Thinking Conservative]

Agree on all points. Particularly, insurers should not be able to deny coverage due to pre-existing conditions. That’s the main thing that people don’t get. Even if you can afford it, you can be turned down for minor things. This doesn’t give self-employed people many options.

Look at this plan in Oklahoma. Do a search on “o-epic.” Granted it’s for lower income self-employed and employed but it’s an interesting plan.

[bill1952]

>Even if you can afford it, you can be turned down for minor things

Oh? How about you paying for your own “minor things?”
How about AIDS?
How about Hep C?
How about cancer?

Minor things like that? “force” insurers to offer that and rates will Skyrocket and make the following a wet dream of the “good old days” of merely double digit inflation.

>Additional concerns have been generated by projections that the state’s insurers plan to raise rates 10 percent to 12 percent next year.

Want “affordable” health care? - Get the government out entirely, from Medicare to Medicaid and everything in between and watch the cost of medical care plummet back to levels in line with the real free market principles that were in effect before 1964.

Fact is, the rates in Mass are going to increase like that for decades, and everyone behind the scenes knows it.

Welcome to the United Socialist States of America.

[Gideon7]

Some medical insurers have a habit of recinding your policy if you get sick with an expensive illness (like cancer). They dig up your original application go over it with a fine-tooth comb. If on your original app you failed to disclose any pre-existing condition (or meds) or fibbed 10 lbs on your weight, they recind your policy. They can do this even if the discrepency is minor and has nothing to do with your claim.

[cosine]

“Particularly, insurers should not be able to deny coverage due to pre-existing conditions. That’s the main thing that people don’t get. Even if you can afford it, you can be turned down for minor things.”

If you can wait until you are sick, it isn’t insurance. And insurers do not turn people down for minor things if prices are flexible. Furthermore, there is a guaranteed issue plan in every state by federal law. They tend to be more expensive as you are supposed to buy insurance before you get sick, but you can always get insurance that limits our out-of-pocket to say $6,000 a year no matter what is wrong with you.