Killing kids' insurance: no child left insured?

• Author: Suderman, Peter
• Position: Citings - Brief article

SIX MONTHS after passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (a.k.a.

ObamaCare), a rule requiring insurers to cover children with pre-existing conditions took effect. Although the regulation was intended to make health coverage more accessible to children, in some cases it has had the opposite effect: At least six major insurers decided that the easiest way to comply was to cease selling child-only insurance policies.

Insurers nixed the policies out of fear that they could lead to insurance gaming, with families picking up coverage just before getting treatment and dropping it immediately afterward. The law's authors created a limited enrollment period to discourage such behavior, but insurers argued that the rule was still sufficiently vague that they might...