Even the LA times might be starting to understand the downside of Obamacare. Of course, the tone of the article is against the health insurance companies for simply responding to market incentives.
The insurance companies are going to stop selling child-only insurance policies because there is no profit in it anymore. The new health care bill mandated that insurance companies must cover all kids, no matter how risky, but caps the rate they can charge. This creates a situation where insurance companies are forced to lose money. Instead of doing this, they of course, stopped selling the policies that will lose money.
This is not the fault of greedy health insurance companies. They would be more than happy to sell policies if the market could set the rates. Health insurance companies must be able to compete across state lines so the market rate will prevail. When the government confuses signals, these are the kinds of adverse results we can see. Obamacare will slowly but surely kill private sector insurance. This is just the beginning.
The practical reality is that we are losing more than just a type of insurance that can be purchased. We are restricting people's freedom. Anthem Blue Cross is being coerced to provide a service they do not want to provide to people they do not think they can adequately treat. To make it worse, they are dictated the prices they are forced to charge. The consumer is no better off. The consumer now has less choices, less freedoms than before. The consumer who might have been willing to pay a rate that would have allowed their child to be insured is no longer permitted to do so. This is not just a loss of a service, but rather, a loss of one of the core freedoms this country once cherished.
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