Private insurance plans will have to accept anyone with any preexisting conditions and no coverage limits — as you said, the equivalent of insurers being forced to insure a burning building for any amount.

That will make them incredibly, preposterously expensive. On top of that, there will be a 35% excise tax just to send the cost into the stratosphere.

Ordinary people will of course not be able to afford such insurance. This will drive everyone into the public option. So why even allow private insurance to exist at all?

The answer is this –

Once the rationing begins, there are going to be millionaires — people like Nancy Pelosi or Ted Kennedy — who are going to find themselves running into the ration barriers. What if Nancy Pelosi needs a hip replacement when she is 85 years old? Allowing a few very, very expensive private insurance plans to continue to exist as an elite preserve will ensure that the “right sort of people” — the Pelosis, Kennedys, etc — can continue to get the sort of end of life health treatment available to ordinary Americans today — the sort of health care that will be strictly illegal for you and me under the public plan.

It’s incredibly evil. It’s what they are proposing, and it needs to be unmasked for what it is.