I hear what you are saying Peter and 2 things that will not go away(I feel) are pre-existing conditions and allowing kids 26 and under to be on their parent's health plan.

I work for a health insurance provider as a programmer so I'm seeing changes in laws as they come down the pike. One change came down recently that surprised me was health insurance companies can no longer allow penalizing or bonus patients in any way for health reasons. Our company used to give out checks to people that kept logs of healthy habits once a quarter and this was discontinued very recently(by law). The reason was that it was the carrot, much like the penalizing was the stick.

In summary, I realize the Republicans talk a good game in enforcing refusing coverage on pre-existing conditions but in reality, it won't happen.