(I haven't heard much about this in the health care debate, so if others have been addressing it, by all means please post links to those articles or diaries. The more the merrier!)
Remember how Wall Street and the banks and their allies like Phil Gramm got deregulation through Congress in part by saying the financial casino gamblers needed freedom for "innovation"?
Remember how the post-Watergate campaign finance reforms seemed at the time like they would clean up politics, only to leave the giant soft-money loophole big enough to drive a truck through?
Big Money ALWAYS finds a way around whatever law you write.
That kind of "innovation" is a major reason why we need a an "extended Medicare option," "public option," "nonprofit option," "federal health insurance plan" -- whatever you care to call it.
No matter how strong the consumer protections seem that get included in the bill, whatever promises the insurance companies make -- without , the health insurance industry will find ways around all of those protections and we will be shafted UNLESS we have the nonprofit option to provide true market discipline.
Wall Street's demands for ever-higher profits and their own greed will make it happen. So they won't be allowed to drop people for preexisting conditions anymore. They'll find some other way to drop or drive away unprofitable people -- you know, people who get sick or shot or hit by a car.
Look at Kennedy-Kassebaum. The health insurance industry figured out how to "innovate" its way right around that one.
People ages 19 to 64 need a health plan that isn't driven by profit, a health plan that won't be looking for new ways to weasel out of actually covering people when they need it, a health plan that will be accountable to we the people through our elected representatives instead of Wall Street and overpaid CEOs.