No insurance plan is going to cover every illness. It would be so expensive that no one could afford it. And no one would want it, anyway. People buy insurance to cover a limited number of potential events, not every possible occurrence. When you get up in the morning, you don’t buy insurance for everything that might happen that day.

Given that health insurance will never cover all ailments, insurance mandates don’t make sense. Whenever the state imposes a new mandate, insurance companies will comply with it by moving away from covering other diseases (and, of course, by charging higher prices).

Legislators should keep that in mind when they consider this mandate for eating disorders. If it becomes law, the mandate will mean that other disorders go uncovered.