[HillRat]

>In a more free market, insurance wouldn't be tied to specific states - you could buy insurance from any firm in the nation willing to provide it.

That's an idea that sounds good but turns out to be a nightmare in practice. You would end up with a classic "race to the bottom" scenario of the sort seen in credit card regulations, corporate tax rates, and employee disability reimbursements -- eventually you would end up with a state that allows such egregiously poor insurance practices that every company would flock there to avoid more onerous regulations.

The current system is byzantine and a nightmare to deal with -- I still wake up in the middle of the night with implementation guides scrolling behind my eyelids -- but it's an improvement over a policy that would, in effect, let the payers pick and choose the least-protective regulatory structure.