"Chuck Gould" wrote in message
oups.com...
We had a similar situation here in Washington with health insurance. A
few years ago, the state legislature passed a law that said any company
writing health insurance in Washington could not refuse coverage to any
individual. The insurance companies could set the rates to reflect the
risk, of course, but they couldn't actually refuse anybody because they
presented too great a risk. Net result: A lot of insurance companies
just stopped writing health insurance in Washington, period.

Now imagine that the Federal gov't passed the same law about not refusing
coverage to an individual. The insurance companies couldn't just move to
another state to do business. They'd have to find a way to make it work.



After all,
what sort of premiums
can be charged to cover the cost of caring for some of the AIDS
patients who require many thousands of dollars in prescriptions each
month just to delay their certain death?


Every group health insurance policy is already required to accept an
individual despite pre-existing conditions. And it's a federal government
law that sees to that.






It's the same reason that you have trouble buying full coverage
mechanical insurance on a boat these days. Time was that if you blew up
your 5000 hour diesel engines the insurance company would scratch out a
check for $40,000 to offset your "loss". Not typical anymore. The
premiums charged cannot even begin to offset the almost certain "loss"
that every boat will eventually experience. The only reason you can buy
boat insurance from any carrier at any price in FLA is that some boats
will survive a hurricane, and most boats don't have to ride out a
hurricane in a specific location every year.


Good. So spread the risk over an even bigger population.