Insurers Drop Health-Care Challenge

Falling into line without a fight, the insurance industry agreed Monday to cover children with pre-existing conditions as soon as this year, despite having argued earlier that it could choose not to insure such children at all until 2014. Ever since the bill passed, insurers had raised questions about the law’s wording, looking for possible escape hatches. But Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius scolded them Monday morning. "Health insurance reform is designed to prevent any child from being denied coverage because he or she has a pre-existing condition," she wrote to the industry’s top lobbyist, Karen Ignagni. "Now is not the time to search for nonexistent loopholes that preserve a broken system."