Stop the Cherry Picking

Any health insurance reform that seeks to maintain a private system will have to stop the companies from cherry picking their applicants. Otherwise stories such as this will drive the American people into the arms of a single payer or other form of public health care system:

When the Golden Rule Insurance Company rejected her application for health coverage last year, Peggy Robertson was mystified. “It made no sense,” said Ms. Robertson, 39, who lives in Centennial, Colo. “I’m in perfect health.”

She was turned down because she had given birth by Caesarean section. Having the operation once increases the odds that it will be performed again, and if she became pregnant and needed another Caesarean, Golden Rule did not want to pay for it. A letter from the company explained that if she had been sterilized after the Caesarean, or if she were over 40 and had given birth two or more years before applying, she might have qualified.

If private companies such as Golden Rule are driven out of business by public policy, they will only have themselves to blame.

HT: Meghan Schrader