"Could it be," I asked, "that they had decided to find something useful to do with their lives?"

Apparently not. Families USA has just released a study that can find nothing right with the individual health insurance market.

It's filled with breathless concerns about evil health insurance practices. For example, according to the study, "Failing Grades: State Consumer Protections in the Individual Health Insurance Market":

• "In the vast majority of states, insurance companies are permitted to reject individuals for coverage based on their health status, occupation, or even their recreational activities."
• "Insurance companies will not necessarily provide coverage for the very health services individuals need when they sign up for a policy."
• "Not every state ensures that premiums are reasonable by reviewing premium rate increases before insurers impose them. And few states require that at least 75 cents of every dollar collected in premiums be spent on medical services rather than administration and profit."
• "In the majority of states, insurance companies can move to limit or revoke an individual's policy long after it was purchased by claiming that the policyholder did not adequately reflect his/her medical history on the application. Oftentimes, this leaves individuals with huge medical bills that must be paid out of pocket and no recourse."

With these kinds of "consumer protections," who needs enemies?

The language is deceptive and insidious and never points out that these practices go on all the time -- in life insurance and other types of insurance. What Families USA really opposes is standard underwriting. The organization wants the individual market to work like the group market. And if and when it succeeds in achieving that goal -- and it is having a fair amount of success in the states, as legislators propose legislation creating "groups of one" -- it will then try to get the group market to work like Medicare.

Other types of individual insurance operate the same as health insurance. Life insurance, for example, can deny people who apply with a significant, or terminal, medical condition. If life insurers accept an applicant, they can charge more for older people or those with medical conditions that might affect their life expectancy. And life insurers can revoke a policy within the two-year "contestability period" just as health insurers can.

Since groups like Families USA aren't screaming about unfair life insurance practices, the organization must not be opposed to those actions in principle -- just where health insurance is concerned.

The fact is they don't want a market in health care, and they don't want consumer choice. They see health care as a public good that should be provided and paid for by the government (i.e., taxpayers). All of their criticisms are simply window dressing to help them achieve their goal of universal coverage in a government-controlled system.

In doing so, they will turn this "public good" into a public bad.