Meet Diane Black, the new GOP congresswoman from Tennessee’s sixth congressional district. Like most all of her GOP colleagues, she's eager to repeal health care reform. Why? Because she thinks it's a really bad idea to require insurance companies to provide coverage for sick children:
There is a mandate there that insurance companies must insure children up to the age of 24, and what we have found is that there are a lot of insurance companies that are just saying we’re not going to be in this business any longer, because we know that we can’t survive if that’s what we’re going to do.
And the second piece of that was to insure children regardless of their health care history, and as a result of that, I know several health care insurance agents in my district who have said we’re just dropping any insurance for children whatsoever.
First of all, the law allows parents to keep children on their insurance policy until age 26 -- not 24. But setting aside her ignorance of the most basic details about the bill, the bigger problem with Black's argument is that she's saying insurance companies shouldn't be required to cover sick children because it might put them out of business.
Basically, what Black wants is a world in which insurance companies can drop coverage for anybody who isn't completely healthy. That's obviously a great business model -- sell insurance to people who aren't likely to need it, then drop coverage as soon as they get sick. But if insurance companies can cherry pick and only offer coverage to healthy people, then what's the point of insurance in the first place?
One of the very best things in the new law is that insurance companies are required to offer insurance to everybody. That means they can't deny coverage to kids just because the kids happen to be sick. Diane Black and her GOP colleagues want to do away with that. They want insurance companies to be able to deny coverage to children who aren't healthy. In other words, they want real life death panels. The only good thing you can say here is that at least Black had the courage to admit it.