What, specifically, am I referring to? For the sake of brevity, I will limit myself here to one issue, pre-existing conditions. By now, most everyone has heard conservative commentaters referring to people with pre-existing conditions as being like someone who has a car crash and then wants to then get insurance.
Astonishingly, this bit of insurance industry propaganda gets trotted out as if it reflects a genuine insight and settles the issue. Yet the truth of the matter is that, exploiting an antitrust exemption, almost all health insurance companies agreed among themselves to not insure anyone with a preexisting condition -- and even developed a common manual to bar this entire category of people. The insurers also agreed to keep secret about it.
Years ago, when insurers tried this kind of chicanery as to auto insurance, state legislatures pushed back and created risk pools that assigned such risks randomly and required insurers to cover them on reasonable rates and terms. I assume that this simple solution was not tried for health insurance because the insurance companies did not want it for fear of getting stuck with more and more of the cost.
Health insurers are major campaign donors and both parties are beholden to them. With the public wanting a solution for the problem of coverage denials for pre-existing conditions, Democrats had a ready answer: use the issue to demand a system of socialized medicine run by private insurers that would eventually collapse and lead to a single payer system. The GOP answer seems to be to tread along the same road, if more slowly. The insurance industry finds both approaches acceptable.
I would prefer to tell the public the truth, that insurance companies aggravated the problem of insurance being denied for preexisting conditions by abusing an antitrust exemption. Repeal that exemption and tell the states to develop solutions, with a pot of federal money available to help. Maybe that will resolve the problem, or maybe it will need to be addressed again by Congress.
Very interesting post; thank you!