Why Even Have Health Insurers?

From the LA Times:

[I]nsurers can’t profitably manage through periods of high unemployment. They can’t price policies in a way that keeps healthy young people in the same pool as older people, producing a mockery of the very point of indemnity insurance. Despite a decade of unobstructed consolidation, which was sold to regulators as a way to control healthcare costs by creating mega-insurers like hers, her industry cant control healthcare costs. Bralys words are a reminder of the most important unasked question in the entire healthcare debate: What do we need insurance companies for, anyway? The only way insurers can remain profitable at all is by selling healthy people on policies that don’t offer much coverage at all, while squeezing older, less healthy people remorselessly so they either pay for most of their care out of pocket or get priced out of the insurance market completely thus becoming a burden for taxpayers.

via What do we need health insurers for anyway? – Los Angeles Times.