Dear Mr. Gecko,
I've bought a used car that has a severely dented fender that will cost $2,000 to repair. Please add this vehicle to my policy so I can afford to get it fixed.
Yours Truly,
Me
Sounds silly in that context, but it's what a lot of thoghtful people think health insurance should do. Insurance is certainly an important part of a health care plan but can't be the whole plan and still be insurance.
Since an insurance company must charge premiums based on the person's proportionate risk, pre-existing conditions (risk = 100%) would need to have a premium equal to all of a person's bills plus a markup for administration. Anything else, such as community rating, would merely be cost shifting, a practice despised when hospitals do it but apparently okay to require of insurance companies.
The pre-existing condition problem will mostly, but not entirely, go away when we decouple health insurance from employment, which is almost inevitable. The question then becomes which way does it move - toward more individual control or more government control? In either case, the individual will be able to change jobs with worrying about losing his health insurance.
