At least their profits are healthy!

Only Liberals are silly enough to believe that the Health Care Industry has anything to do with health care, per se. Like everything else in the Greatest Country the World Has Ever Known, the Health Care Industry exists in order to generate profit for the Job Creators.

Just as Ford could care less if a truck buyer drives their truck or not, as long as they purchase a Ford truck with some regularity, Aetna doesn't care if their policy holders get health care or not, as long as they pay their premiums. In fact the less someone drives their truck or attempts to get health care, the more likely they will be satisfied with their purchase and so more likely to make a similar purchase in the future.

We ALL do!

My wife had a Caesarean when our first son was born. Because of that, her disability insurance was denied for a "preexisting condition." When she was actually disabled 25 years later for an unrelated reason, she could only get the $50/month from being a State employee.

We can all expect that EVERY condition will be deemed preexisting. Then we should expect DNA testing to become mandatory - to identify markers that might make one susceptible to a condition (like mixed heritage) be deemed "preexisting". It will start with food stamps and TANF, then unemployment, Medicaid, Medicare, social security... We're all "high risk" yanno...

Really, there is no illness that is not a preexisting condition. There are accidents like getting hit by lightning, but even for something like a heart attack insurance companies can say being overweight or genetically predisposed to heart problems is a preexisting condition after the fact. This is all underwriting: The practice of denying claims by selecting people to exclude from the pool.

But there is no line! No rule that says X is preexisting and Y is not. Insurance companies can devise what ever rules they like so they never have to pay anything. If you open the door a crack, they will slam it open and our health insurance will be worthless. (Eventually, even Republican Congressmen's health insurance will be worthless!)

This is why preexisting coverage is so vital: It doesn't just protect sick people now. It protects everybody who ever gets sick in the future. And considering that we all eventually get sick and die, that is ALL of us.

We are six states away from a Constitutional convention, and rest assured, the Mercers and Kochs will write that new document, so I wouldn't be so sure about your rosy predictions for 2018 and 2020 just yet. We are also one manufactured national emergency away from all of it just being shut off altogether.

Hyperbole? Maybe, but maybe not.
Let's see what happens when all those 5-4 SCOTUS decisions start rolling in.

the free market is not only sentient but has the best interests of the people it is frakking at heart .... there is nothing to worry about

If a Republican gets to name ANOTHER SCOTUS nominee, we are screwed for our lifetimes.

A special thanks, especially to Irked and rporter314 for setting our hearts free from worry. Its good to know the truth.

I should add that there is no healthcare free market. Instead is a market in lockstep with itself and, understand that people will spend anything to get all this great American health care, continue to raise their prices until they find a downturn in customers. Truly inspiring. I guess its a good thing that we have a healthcare system based on for profit capitalism instead of the rest of the industrialized world who understand healthcare is a social need, like police and firemen.

Profit motive is the crux of the problem for American healthcare: You can't have life and death pitted against the motive profit.