ckone:

I am more likely to apply for a credit card with a lower rate are you not?

Oh, absolutely. However, if you're a credit card company, wouldn't you rather charge higher interest rates than lower ones? That's essentially what happened. In 1978 the Supreme Court ruled, in Marquette Bank v. First Omaha Service Corp, that federally chartered banks only had to follow the rules of the state they, and not the consumer, resided in. Citibank, going broke, convinced South Dakota to change their laws to allow essentially anything and everything Citibank wanted. Once the South Dakota laws were changed, essentially every credit card company in the country moved to that state.

South Dakota was happy- they got a ton of jobs. The credit card companies were thrilled- they could charge whatever interest they wanted. Consumers were screwed- any company that didn't move to South Dakota soon went out of business and they (we) were left with unattractive credit options- including many fewer options with the lower credit rates many of us had access to before.

Now imagine this situation only with healthcare. It will not just be a price issue. Minimum coverage requirements, maximum payouts, pre-existing conditions, dropped coverage, any of this may be fair game to be rewritten by any state government that wants to attract a few thousand jobs. I would like the credit card with the lowest possible rate, but the availability of that decreased after Marquette Bank. I would also like the best possible healthcare insurance, but I'm worried that the availability of that will decrease if insurance companies are allowed to cross state borders.

ckone:

Seems like your comparing apples to oranges.

Why? There's already a legal precedent supporting this interpretation. There's already a big industry with deep pockets that can fight for this interpretation. There's no sign whatsoever that anyone in the federal government has the inclination or stomach to fight for expanding federal regulation of health insurance companies in this matter. What is to prevent this from happening?

You say that it's comparing apples to oranges. Maybe so, but they're both fruit. Why is this not a valid comparison?

Wikipedia on Marquette Nat. Bank case: <link>

Article titled, 'The Ascendancy of the Credit Card Industry' from NPR. This describes how Citi moved to South Dakota: <link>

Article from salon going into more detail than I have: <link>

And ckone- thank you for your response.