The article does not draw the obvious conclusion, which is that private enterprise is not suitable for pooling risk in the desired way, i.e. such that everyone must pay in quasi-uniformly and be given care in an unbiased way. Private insurance spends a lot of money on quantitatively evaluating and grading risks - this is advantageous when it comes to voluntary behavior, not so much for medical matters. Some health behavior, such as smoking and eating habits, is voluntary, some is not. Trying to control behavior of insurance companies and insured in a free market leads to the Rube Goldberg Baucus health plan (though the politician's desire to please everyone also contributes to the complexity).

America has accepted the principle that income and health care should be redistributative across age, in the Social Security and Medicare programs, but this is absent from most proposed reform plans. This principle would dictate, in the simplest and most practical form, that premiums be a simple fraction of income.

I should say also that almost no one in America will deny in public that everyone is entitled to a minimum level of health care (hence even extreme rightists claim that such care is provided through the emergency room), so that the universally-desired program will also be redistributative in income level, like Medicaid and laws forbidding means tests in emergency rooms.

You've skipped over the problem of adverse selection that the big, mean, evil, insurance companies will be faced with if they are absolutely required to cover all pre-existing conditions.

Why would anyone spend money on insurance, when they simply can buy it when they get sick? you're diagnosed with cancer - OK time to buy some health insurance.

So you absolutely, positively must mandate people buy health insurance - with some sort of serious penalty if they don't - or everyone wil simply wait 'til they get sick, and then stick it to the insurance company.

NY, NJ, and CT, all manage to cover people with very limited pre-existing limitations - CT does it with the medical equivalent of an assigned risk pool. Essentially, if you already have insurance and are switching insurance carriers, you must be accepted without any limitations. You can also not have your insurance cancelled if you become sick.

There is a pre-ex if you have no insurance and then apply for insurance, but it can only last for either six or 12 months, depending on whether you were undertreatment before you aplied for insurance.