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Ultimately the issue as always will be the “pre-existing conditions.” Any condition, ever, can be defined as a means to deny you coverage.

Honest, good, responsible insurance companies would differentiate between those conditions that are truly “big time,” on going, with major bills, and non-recurring “pre-existing conditions.”

For example, I know two women diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis . . . over 20 years ago. NEITHER is in any noticeable way incapacitated. Both are physically very active (far more than most men I know). Neither requires ANY serious long-term meds (which are outrageously expensive because the prices are gouged to support the subsidized/price controlled European nations’s drugs).

Both of these women would be denied coverage. That isn’t right. On the other hand, neither is it right for someone with three heart attacks and cancer that is in remission to expect to get a cheap policy.

I don’t know what the solution is, except to have a Medicaid catastrophic plan for the latter, and then allow insurance companies to cross state lines with their health policies. But I also understand a policy cannot “travel” from job to job because the pools change. Perhaps for now simply blowing up Obamacare is the best first start because markets WILL sort SOME of it out.

The solution is to have a basic plan that costs less than your average cable bill and covers preventive with a high deductible (not astronomical) with an adjoining HSA for every single American. Some check ups, urgent care clinic visit, $500 hospital co-pay, and $20 generics.

Everything else needs to be optional provided by employer or on the private market a la carte. There is no reason why a single man 33 years old needs abortion coverage.

The insurance companies don’t want this because they don’t want to deal with the collection costs from that many individual payers. They want to send one bill to the government.

I would have no problem requiring insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions for people who are continuously insured. In other words, a person who is insured through one company should be able to continue coverage with another company if their circumstances change (new job, relocation, etc.). There might even be documented standards for medical costs to be shared between the "new" insurance company and the "old" one.

This may sound like a very conservative position to take, but I say this because the definition of "pre-existing condition" can be very hazy, and because disqualifications for pre-existing conditions can tie people down in an existing job or life situation that may not work for them in any other way.

In exchange for this requirement, I would allow insurance companies to go back to the days when they could impose lifetime caps on their coverage. Without at least one of these (denial of coverage for existing conditions, or lifetime caps on coverage), there's simply no way for an insurance company to accurately price the risk in their coverage.