Matthew Yglesias, writing about the case of a girl with a tragic medical condition, is typically confused:

It's true that covering Emily will mean slightly higher costs for everyone whose kids don't get sick. But this is how insurance is supposed to work.

No, Matt, that's not what insurance is for, that's what socialism is for. Insurance is a contract designed to calculate the risk and cost of an event and allow one to pay the expected cost x expected risk over a period of time to avoid incurring a large cost at one time should the event occur, not a means to spread costs among a group of people for events that have already occurred. The possibility that the person or entity you contract with may (or may not) have other insurance contracts is entirely incidental to any given contract.

Forcing companies to offer insurance against events that have already happened is equivalent to demanding that racetracks honor bets made after the race is already over.

Some carriers have responded to the provision by ending the sale of child-only policies.

Shockingly, they won't voluntarily enter into arrangements guaranteed to lose money. Hey Matt, maybe you'd like to sell poor little Emily such an "insurance policy" yourself? What, isn't it her right to buy one from you? How dare you refuse? I'm sure Matt's response would be "But I'm not an insurance company!" but that's nonresponsive: any individual can contract with any other, laws permitting. No one wants to lose their own money, but leftists are happy to insist that other people be forced to lose their money (for the children!). That's the difference between insurance and socialism: one is voluntary, the other only works at the point of a gun.

Yes, it's tragic that sometimes people become ill and incur large debts through no fault of their own, but a greater tragedy would be creating a system in which it is no longer profitable to develop new and expensive ways to heal the sick, and thereby ruining what is indisputably the best health care system in the world. It's a terrible mistake to think the government cudgel is the answer to every tragedy. The proper response is to encourage voluntary help:

The Thompsons were fortunate that Children's Mercy Hospital, across the Missouri line in Kansas City, agreed years ago to take Emily as a charity case for her annual rounds of testing, which run nearly $10,000. They were charged only $10.

Well, imagine that: people responding to tragedy without a government bludgeon.

Turning insurance into socialism will cause more problems than it solves. Statists need to realize there is a reason even Cuba is now abandoning the socialist model -- without incentives to produce and voluntary exchange, everyone ends up poorer, no matter how much gov't repression you throw into the mix to "encourage" them. The main reason we all get up and go to work in the morning is that it ensures we can pay for medical insurance and other things we voluntarily contract for. If you want to live in a utopia where you never have to worry about paying for food, clothing, shelter and health insurance you'd better be prepared to accept a Cuban standard of living because no one else wants to work to provide those things for you.