It has been over 50 years since this writer attempted to make a living selling health and life insurance as a licensed Florida agent. In the two months I held that job I managed to sell one policy, but the underwriters rejected it for “pre-existing conditions.” At the time, I knew quite a bit about health insurance, but little of it is the same in the 21st century.

Instead of a private, regulated medical insurance industry, we have state-by-state regulated health insurers and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA), a federal program reviled as “Obamacare.” Where someone is insured under their employer's policy, disputes are subject to federal, not state, courts as such policies fall under the Employers Retirement Income Securities Act (ERISA).

The ACA was supposed to be tied to the federally mandated Medicaid program, which would assist state pools in providing insurance for those who couldn't buy health insurance in the market. Many states refused federal funds to accept this support, and the whole concept fell apart. While nobody is still talking about “death squads” that would select who got life-saving care and who didn't, the complaints were about high premiums and the “mandatory” coverage requirement.

Will Congress do 'something'?

It is doubtful that any new health insurance legislation will be produced by Congress this fall. What is the holdup? Basically, Congress can't seem to understand one of the basic tenets of insurance, that to make a risk insurable, there must be a large number of homogeneous exposure units.