We lived in Kentucky for 2 years and enjoyed our time there, but …
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Excerpted from WSJ:The Competition Cure, Aug 23, 2009
In places like New Jersey, the annual cost of an individual plan for a 25-year-old male in 2006 was $5,880.
A similar plan in Kentucky, cost less than $1,000 in 2006.
The higher cost of medical services in the Garden State only explains a small part of the difference.
The main reason: New Jersey is highly regulated, with costly mandated benefits and guaranteed access to insurance.
Affordability would improve if consumers could escape states where each policy is loaded with mandates.
“If consumers do not want expensive ‘Cadillac’ health plans that pay for acupuncture, fertility treatments or hairpieces, they could buy from insurers in a state that does not mandate such benefits”
If consumers can’t escape heavily mandated states, “risk selection” is a problem.
As more healthy people opt out of health insurance because it is too expensive relative to what they consume, the pool transforms into a group of older, sicker people. Prices go higher still and more healthy people flee.
High-mandate states are in what experts call an “adverse selection death spiral.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203550604574360923109310680.html?mod=djemEditorialPage
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The Rx: let health insurance policies be sold across state lines … in effect, working around state mandates and letting folks buy only the coverage they want.
Note: Like tort reform, ObamaCare doesn’t include the selling of policies across state lines.
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The Homa Files 
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