BLOGSCAN - Insuring the Right to Buy Health Insurance

On the Covert Rationing Blog, DrRich discussed the latest amazing product from our friends at UnitedHealth. Called Continuity, it allows people who are currently healthy to buy the right to buy health insurance in the future, presumably at a time when they might not be healthy, and hence would not be able to meet the sort of stringent underwriting requirements that most companies now impose on those seeking individual health insurance. Thus, this product is sort of second order insurance, insurance on insurance, or, as DrRich puts it a hedge on the future risk of uninsurability. DrRich's incisive post argued that the offering of such a product suggests that UnitedHealth is betting that it will be out of the health insurance business in the near future, put out of business by some new national health insurance scheme.