A new Obamacare myth is born: Hordes of Americans are 'gaming' the system

That's the name of this article by veteran LA Times columnist Michael Hiltzik. Here's how it starts:

With the traditional attack points on the Affordable Care Act having faded away--most enrollees were already insured (wrong), millions of people lost their coverage and couldn't replace it (wrong), etc.--Obamacare's critics have been looking for new ones. An up-and-coming star of this firmament is the notion that Americans are "gaming" the system by waiting until they're sick to enroll in an individual policy, then dropping it as soon as they're cured. This theory has been around for a while, but it got a jolt of life last month when [mega-insurer] UnitedHealth Group appeared to blame such a strategy for losses that were leading it to consider withdrawing from the individual insurance exchange market as soon as 2017.

The rest of Hiltzik's article systematically reviews the evidence and counter-evidence for the "gaming" hypothesis. Hiltzik makes his case that the "gaming" problem doesn't exist. Highly recommended.