Health overhaul will keep insurers from dropping people after they become too expensive

The Los Angeles Times reports on some of the provisions in the health care bills will affect individuals because they will regulate how insurers treat people with chronic diseases. These "insurance reforms ... will open a new chapter in the lives of sick people … those with mental illness, heart disease, cancer, diabetes — chronic ailments that touch almost every family in America.

Those patients are the ones most likely to lose coverage because their policies impose lifetime limits, or because they have, in industry parlance, a 'preexisting condition.' … (L)egislation President Obama is expected to sign into law next year will almost certainly ensure they have access to health insurance" (Fiore and Hook, 12/23).