Conventional wisdom on ObamaCare not quite right.

Conventional wisdom on ObamaCare not quite right.  Megan McArdle has a list of things to know, in which she debunks cherished beliefs on both sides of the ObamaCare debate.  One example:

People with pre-existing conditions will be able to buy insurance in the private market for the first time. I used to believe that I was uninsurable in the private market, because I have a (fairly boring) autoimmune disease. My colleague Virginia Postrel, a breast cancer survivor who buys insurance in the private market, set me straight. Since the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act passed in 1996, people with pre-existing conditions can still be covered as long as they maintain health coverage. It’s only if your coverage lapses that you run into trouble.

Obviously, not everyone maintains coverage -- when you’ve lost a job, health insurance is often one of the first things that gets cut, and some people never had coverage in the first place. But it isn’t true that no one with pre-existing conditions could get health insurance before Obamacare came along and fixed everything.

This is, by the way, one more reason to be skeptical of predictions that we’re about to unlock a massive untapped well of entrepreneurship.

Ms. McArdle is a national treasure – a calm and grounded voice of sanity on a wide range of topics...