Why we need a federal department of insurance

That, when the public option was junked by Team Obama, was probably about the biggest single thing missing from Obamacare.

Blue Shield's request for a 59 percent rate hike in California is a good example.

If sister Blue Cross made such a request in Texas, it would probably be granted without scrutiny, just to try to show how bad Obamacare is, for example.

That said, California's laws on health insurance regulations are about as toothless as Texas, beyond the federal mandate of spending costs on actual coverage-related issues. And, in reality, the federal guidelines on that are kind of loose.