When will it be possible to buy health insurance with a pre-existing condition?

From my research, it looks like that will not kick in until 2014. Here is the article from The New York Times that details which features will begin when.

When we stop calling it “insurance” and just go ahead and call it “another kind of welfare”.

Truly, if we’re going to deal with the world as it is instead of “the world as we wish it could be”, it will not be “insurance” if you can buy “home insurance” while your house is burning down. It’s a corruption of the term.

But to answer the question you probably intended, “When can I buy that kind of welfare?” ... 2014.

Yeah, they need to preload it with revenue before they start spending in order to get the numbers where they were tolerable to enough Congressmen and Senators to pass the bill.

The reason we call it “insurance” is that the Insurance Industry forced the bill to include them in the revenue stream even though they are entirely redundant. If we removed that corpus we would have more money to spend on preventive medicine and premium subsidies for the underpaid.

@dpworkin you seem to be paying the same homage with use of the word “premium” ... as if there really is “insurance” involved.

Actually, from that same article that janbb mentioned, this year, if you’re eligible.

“National High-Risk Pool. People with preexisting conditions will be eligible for subsidized coverage through a national high-risk pool, beginning 90 days after enactment. People who have been uninsured for at least six months and who have a preexisting condition will be eligible for subsidized coverage through a temporary national high-risk pool, to be established by the secretary in 2010. High-risk pools will not impose preexisting condition exclusions and plans will be required to cover on average no less than 65 percent of medical costs (actuarial value) and to limit out-of-pocket spending to that which is defined for health savings accounts (HSAs), or $5,950 for individual policies and $11,900 for family policies. Premiums will be set for a standard population and cannot vary by more than a factor of four based on age (i.e., 4:1 age bands). The secretary will receive $5 billion to carry out the program.”

@andrew Cool sleuthing. I missed that bit.

@andrew Interesting, so once you’re uninsured for 6 months, you can hop into the high-risk pool. V. nice.

Thanks everyone for the info!

You should also check with your state insurance commission. I believe states are required to either run their own high risk pools or allow the government to run their high risk pools. My state has opted to run it’s own high risk pool.

i guess seeing health care and insurance as a social responsibility and making commentary on that is apparently neither helpful nor on-topic, yet pontificating otherwise is…interesting.