Gaming the Affordable Care Act.

When the price of something is artificially controlled, all sorts of crazy ways to arbitrage will be created. One of the more imaginative (creepy? immoral? disgusting? unseemly?) and tongue-in-cheek ways is below. You might think this particular one will never occur, and that's probably true. The point is, plenty of other schemes will.

So, if it's now illegal for a medical insurance co to refuse people for 'pre-existing conditions'-- what's to prevent a group from using this for various extortionate purposes? For example you live in a big city, you have cancer, and you are friends w/ a bunch of cancer victims. You get them all on board to threaten to switch from their disparate insurers to a single one, such as ABC Insurance Corp. You call ABC and tell them, 500 of us cancer victims will sign up tomorrow for your policy, and you cannot refuse us, and we will cost you tens of millions. If you just pay us $5k each we will go away.

Bill