I think I heard that before Obamacare they had high risk pools to take care of pre-existing conditions after the law was passed. Basically a catastrophic plan which would have been fine for me, if they had existed or I knew about them.
They had state pools before OCare, but I knew no one in one. They worked.
In my opinion, ocare took care of a non-existent problem at every level and was a colossal waste of money and a pure power grab.