Big buiness, especially big health insurance business, is in the business of making as much $$ as they can. To that end the health insurance industry wants to sell you a policy that they will have to spend as little as possile supporting. Of course it’s in their self-interest to deny claims against anything they can.

This post got it absolutely right. For me and millions like me, the only hope right now for medical insurance is through a large group policy offered by an employer. Same goes for most life insurance, and sometimes long term care and other insurances also.
Insurance companies are indeed not in business to provide care. They are in business to lower costs and maximize profits. We’re the only industrialized western nation where entities with these interest have such influence on something that’s vital to the life and health of all citizens. In short, it’s insane.

I often fantasize about what Dante would have done with the individuals who came up with the idea of denying insurance based on pre-existing conditions. Cancer for all eternity? Endless staph infections?

You have it right that it’s all about pre-existing conditions for many of us.
Even more basic, however, is the idea of insurance — pooling risk. That principle is disregarded when we allow medical underwriting — screening for pre-existing conditions and risk factors. Everyone who has been screened out (or placed in an expensive high-risk pool) will have a very negative opinion.
The flip side, of course, is that if all the “sick” people are included in the pool, rates will go up for everyone, especially the healthy and young.
The ethical necessity of this kind of “sharing the wealth” (risk) is not well accepted in this country. That’s what may sink health insurance reform.

Mr. Waldman,
Here’s an interesting article with polling data:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_health_care_poll
I don’t understand why the pro-lifers aren’t raising hell over pre-existing conditions. Can’t prenatal and pregnancy issues fall under pre-existing conditions? I guess $$$ are more important to Blue Cross and Blue Shield than babies.

The health insurance companies are terrified that they’re going to lose their cash flow. As well they should – they are a stain upon a supposedly Christian nation.
However, just because they say they’ll eliminate pre-existing conditions doesn’t mean they actually will. Never underestimate the probability that corporations are lying through their spokespersons’ teeth.

It does not make business sense to insure people with pre-existing conditions. Does it make business sense for an insurer to provide coverage for a house on fire? Does it make good business sense to provide coverage to a pyromaniac? The only way insurance companies can provide full medical coverage for those with pre-existing conditions is to raise the premiums for all. This rush to provide full coverage for those with pre-existing conditions sounds very much like populist nonsense like the government mandating banks lend to people who cannot qualify for a loan. This is precisely the muddled thinking that contributed heavily to our current recession and housing slump.
Patrick