Some of the country's most prominent health insurance companies have decided to stop offering new child-only plans, rather than comply with rules in the new health-care law that will require such plans to start accepting children with preexisting medical conditions after Sept. 23.

The companies will continue to cover children who already have child-only policies. They will also accept children with preexisting conditions in new family policies.

Nonetheless, supporters of the new health-care law complain that the change amounts to an end run around one of the most prized consumer protections.

"We're just days away from a new era when insurance companies must stop denying coverage to kids just because they are sick, and now some of the biggest changed their minds," Ethan Rome, executive director of Health Care for America Now, an advocacy group, said in a statement. "[It] is immoral, and to blame their appalling behavior on the new law is patently dishonest."

As David Dayen points out,

However, this is not the only area where we're seeing something like this. The ACA creates a law forcing a high medical loss ratio; insurance companies try to game it (consumer advocates appear to have won the first round, however). The ACA put into place early provisions like limiting annual and lifetime limits and allowing children to stay on their parents' policies until the age of 26; insurance companies use that as a pretext to jack up premiums, far beyond the cost of these measures. The ACA chopped the donut hole in half in the near term and eventually will eliminate them; pharmaceutical companies may respond by increasing drug prices to offset the cost of the discount.

So in addition to having to fend off the slow chipping away of the law by the GOP, especially if they gain power over one or both houses of Congress, Democrats have to deal with the foxes they left in the henhouse, who are systematically working to preserve their own profits at the expense of consumers. This could have been mitigated by real competition in the marketplace through a public insurance option, or of course removed as a problem with a single-payer system. Neither of those options occurred, and we're left with a health care system still hampered by a giant profit-sucking machine at its center.

It's not hard to feel had when the industry's response to accusations of non-compliance is a version of "yeah - so what?"

The biggest mistake Dems made - over and above their not being willing to even discuss single-payer - was in building in so much delay in implementation; I would be surprised if there is even a shadow of the ACA still visible by 2014, but not shocked at all if, by then, the crisis in health care is even worse than it is today.

I still marvel at how badly this was handled - all to preserve a dysfunctional system being run to make money for investors.  

Medical expense percent of income tax exemption rate 10% vs 7.5%

By contrast, the "everybody in, nobody out" model of single payer would have yielded concrete material benefits to millions, and with The Greatest Orator Of Our Generation defending it....

That second proposal (and maybe third?) seems veto-able.

It's the first one that's the real concern.

Further, with the economy in recession, setting the country up for job losses in the future would not be a good thing.

I look forward to the day when my daughter gets to convene a committee to determine whether or not she should risk her life to bring new life into the world. It's always great when people who have 15 minutes  of responsibility once a month for 10 months get the same weigh in on signing on to an 18+ year obligation that has tremendous physical, emotional, and financial repercussions as the person taking on the actual 18+ obligation.

Oh nevermind, I forgot Democratic House member Lipinski and his good friend from across the aisle have that covered and are presently working on making it law.