The Department of Labor's Employee Benefits Security Administration last month issued rules that "[i]n effect" will "close a legal loophole that could have allowed employers to make health insurance more expensive for unhealthy workers than for their colleagues," according to Kaiser Daily Health.

And this again raises a question that has been circulating quite a bit in the last year: should healthier people have greater access to affordable health insurance?

In California, Governor Schwarzenegger has suggested that those people who meet certain health oriented bench marks should pay less for medical coverage, in the form of vouchers that could be applied for maintaining a healthy weight, having low cholesterol, not smoking, keeping low blood pressure, etc.

The idea is that unhealthy people boost overall medical coverage costs, which are in turn filtered down to everyone who must find coverage. In essence, the idea is that those who cost less deserve more affordable health insurance.

But detractors argue that this is illegal, and promotes discrimination in the workplace. It could also make it impossible for those with pre-existing conditions to find affordable health insurance to treat them, something that could mean the difference between their life and death.

In this case the Department of Labor handled the situation for us, closing a loophole that would have stigmatized those with a condition. But the fact still remains that affordable coverage is very difficult to find these days, no matter what your health condition might be.