This is the first phase of so-called "reform". IN the linked piece, notice how the report opens with an anecdote, a sad story about a family who has a child with hemophelia and has reached the total limit for their insurance pay-outs. The reporter then gushes about how, under the "new health care reform law" the family won't, as the mother says, "have to worry about that."

No. Because the people who try to make the insurance company profitable, so it can stay in business and employ people, well, those folks will now be FORCED to pay out more. This, of course, will inspire the business people to have to raise rates for others who are customers of their insurance policies. These increases in premiums (this pattern has been seen in state after state that has already instituted these kinds of mandates on companies), the increases will then inspire more people who FORMERLY could have paid to DROP their policies. Those people will be the younger, healthier people who will decide to wait until they get sick before they buy their insurance. This, in turn, will inspire the insurance company folks to have to raise rates, because they will then have a higher proportion of claims-makers versus premium-payers. This, in turn, will inspire more people on the healthier end of the margins to drop their policies, and so on, until premium rates for private insurance companies are so high, people can't afford them, and continually opt for the government plan, pushing private insurance out of the market.

An interesting note. In a free market (if we could ever get back to one -- haven't had one since before the evil FDR) one insurance company could never have the power to push around other companies the way the federal government can to its competitors. Doesn't that tell us something?

Take a look at this piece. Note the completely unbalanced presentation, and also note the REALLY bad writing. We'd expect nothing less from a pop media outlet. And note also that different insurance policies offer different total limits, different coverage structures and so on, giving consumers choices about how much they want to spend to cover potential problems. The reason this family reached "its insurance company's overall payout limit" is because the FAMILY purchased a plan that would only covver up to a certain limit of overall costs. They could, if they had the money, certainly purchase a higher limit or go to a different company, but they made a monetary calculation to buy a particular level of coverage. That is not the fault of the insurance company. And imposing new mandates on the companies to then offer more monetary payouts that don't fall within their original business plan will inspire those companies to have to accept higher expenses, causing them to raise rates for everyone else. The feds are imposing socialism even more intensely on the insurance industry, and that can lead to only one thing: the death of what is left of the private insurance market.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/HealthCare/health-care-benefits-start-thu...

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