If I have the pre-existing condition of diabetes, does that affect my insurability for breast cancer? Are we talking about adjusting rates for risk factors, or refusing entirely to insure any but the perfectly healthy?
Those are actually great questions.
The problem is that because of government intervention, I believe that insurance companies (in at least many states) are precluded from foreclosing coverage for a particular ailment, yet allow coverage for other ailments. You either have total coverage, or you have no coverage. I think that Obamacare takes it one step further and prohibits coverage just for catastrophic events, which would make sense for the youthful and otherwise healthy.
Again, I don't pretend to have all or even any answers, but I'm not convinced that demanding insurers cover preexisting conditions is going to solve anyone's problem, at least in the long-term.
As an aside, many of these issues stem from the fact that almost all the people who do have insurance, obtained it via their employers. You lose your job, you lose your insurance. The issues would probably be more manageable if we had individual or family plans as opposed to group plans and that plan wasn't tied to an employer, but to individuals. Unfortunately, that's not going to change, because our current model is far too ubiquitous.
“Are we talking about adjusting rates for risk factors, or refusing entirely to insure any but the perfectly healthy?”
You know very well there’s a market for covering the less than perfectly healthy.