Quote:Maybe I just dont understand. It seems to me if they sold across state lines they would be national and in line with other national carriers. In my limited knowledge of this it would stand to reason competition would jump therefore lowering prices (premiums) for citizens. This is good no?

The problem would be (as The_Anchorman) explained is that there are very few independent health care providers...The majority of health care providers have a parent company which own several BIG health care companies within itself...So in actuality, there are just a few separate parent companies who own the  majority of the health care industry...

 

To compound this, most of the Board of Directors (BOD) of the parent companies, sit on all of (or most of),the parent companies, and there are many directors/CEO/executives sitting on the subsidiaries of several different health care providers BOD other than their own parent company...To make it easier to understand, the majority of all the major stockholders and executives of most of the BIG health care providers are all the same people even though by appearance and company name, they are separate...When the majority of an industry is owned by the same people there is no competition... 

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