One More Triumph of the Individual Health Insurance Market
Concurring Opinions:
We already know that the individual health insurance market (which includes about 18 million Americans) does a terrific job of rescinding the policies of those who get sick, if they happen to have made a small error on their original application. Now insurers are prying into pharmaceutical records to figure out whom to deny coverage to:
An untold number of people have been rejected for medical coverage for a reason they never could have guessed: Insurance companies are using huge, commercially available prescription databases to screen out applicants based on their drug purchases.
Privacy and consumer advocates warn that the information can easily be misinterpreted or knowingly misused. At a minimum, the practice is adding another layer of anxiety to a marketplace that many consumers already find baffling. “It’s making it harder to find insurance for people,” says Jay Horowitz, an independent insurance agent . . .
I wonder if efforts to stop this would count as the type of horrible regulation that Richard Epstein and David Hyman decry? Perhaps individuals looking for insurance can take some small solace in the fact that the discrimination occurs without respect to political ideology; for example, both Elizabeth Edwards and John McCain would probably be unable to find coverage in a world dominated by individual insurance.