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When should health insurance cost more for someone?

(Fill in the blank) People should pay more for health insurance if they _________.


  • Total voters
    33
No... the point is to aggregate the cost, as you said.
Charging someone more because they increase that cost doesn't negate that point.

Yes it does, because you are no longer aggregating the cost. You are now using market values to charge people according to their specific risk level. That's not insurance, that's a scam. Once you lose the aggregating nature of insurance, what you have is no longer insurance. Maybe a forced savings account based on personal risk; but it no longer functions as insurance.
 
Yes it does, because you are no longer aggregating the cost.
Sure you are. You still dont pay for the huge majority of the services you receive, the healthy people still do that. The cost is still aggregated - you just pay a little more because you are a greater risk to create a greater cost. This doesnt negate the point of insurance in any way.
 
Sure you are. You still dont pay for the huge majority of the services you receive, the healthy people still do that. The cost is still aggregated - you just pay a little more because you are a greater risk to create a greater cost. This doesnt negate the point of insurance in any way.

It makes it not insurance though. You're using market values and risk assessment for premiums. Wherein the point of insurance is to take money from a group (money depends on the type of coverage desired) and spread out all the risk. But now you're not spreading the risk, you're assessing it individually. At which point I see no need for the insurance at all. If the problem is inflated cost of medical access and procedures; then we can address that and allow people to choose to have insurance or not have it and pay their own way should something bad happen to them. Once you start getting into risk assessment you no longer have insurance. You have at best a "savings account". Though you'll pay way more into it than you get out and you'll never recover the difference. So it's a real ****ty savings account.
 
Fill in the blank.

I personally feel people who live healthier lives should have to pay less, or people who live less healthy lives should pay more. But then, how do doctors gauge someone's overall health? Someone can say they don't smoke but really do. Or say they eat healthy but really don't. Doctors can only work off of what they see once or twice (sometimes less) a year. Not to mention insurance companies never see the patients (to my knowledge), so how do they know the doctor is being honest? And there are so many different ways to live healthy / unhealthy... how would one gauge everything?

There are no guarantees to cure any health problem or drug prescriptions, so all one can do is helplessly hope for the best.

ricksfolly
 
Just curious.

If we're going to have heavily regulated insurance and all that jazz, we should be heavily punitive to lifestyles that don't benefit the health of a person.

Diabetes is one of them, a great many people could go off medication, if they used the diet control method.

Sounds good to me in theory...I like the idea of people being financially rewarded for healthy lifestyles. I'm just not sure how it would play out in practice. It seems like it would involve a great deal of subjectivity on the part of insurers, would be difficult to monitor effectively, and would be invasive to people's privacy.

Smoking and obesity are the low-hanging fruit because they're fairly easy to measure, are reasonably objective, and are responsible for the vast majority of behavior-related illnesses.
 
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It makes it not insurance though.
Absolutely it is. It does exactly the same thing, the only difference is you pay a little more than some -- and some pay more than you.
The cost is still spread out over a number of people.

You're using market values and risk assessment for premiums.
So what?

Wherein the point of insurance is to take money from a group (money depends on the type of coverage desired) and spread out all the risk.
That doesnt change, Its still insurance.

But now you're not spreading the risk, you're assessing it individually.
No, you dont. The cost is still aggregated across the entire pool of people that pays in.

At which point I see no need for the insurance at all.
This is only because you're looking at it incorrectly.
And, of course, under your argument, no one presently has insurance, everyone is assuming the risk themselves - right now.
 
Should cost the same no matter what.
Why should you, a young healty person, pay the same for your insurance as does someone who is old and sick?
 
Why should you, a young healty person, pay the same for your insurance as does someone who is old and sick?

If we can smooth out the cost of health insurance over the course of a person's life, instead of cramming nearly the entire cost into the last 10-20 years, it will enable people to plan for their financial futures much more effectively by eliminating a major source of financial uncertainty.
 
That's exactly what insurance is, Goobie. Exactly.

Not really.

All other forms of insurance spread risk around to appropriate and similar age groups.
Would anyone here like to pay the same price for car insurance, that an 16 year old male does, for full coverage?

Didn't think so.
 
The guy with the speeding tickets CHOSE to drive recklessly. No one chooses to get leukemia.

Bad example.

People choose ro smoke, they choose to be sedentary, they choose to be alcoholic, they choose to be gay.

And all life choices have a measurable risk that shoulf be reflected in the premium.
 
That's exactly what insurance is, Goobie. Exactly.

No. No reason at all for a young man to pay for someone octogenarian's stroke coverage.

How many women should have the cost of prostate cancer in their premiums?
 
Bad example.

People choose ro smoke, they choose to be sedentary, they choose to be alcoholic,

And I have no problem with charging people more for their lifestyle choices. Just not their preexisting conditions (whether they result from those lifestyle choices or not).

Scarecrow Akhbar said:
they choose to be gay.

Obvious troll is obvious.
 
They should charge everyone the same price.

They should make the categories based on what kind of coverage you want.

Something like:

1. Full coverage
2. 50/50 or something like that.
3. Catastrophic emergencies


Not exactly but maybe you get the idea.

The government should stay the hell out of it though.

Also, people should try to shop around and negotiate with doctors and learn how much it really costs.

The government and insurance companies make care more expensive than it really is.
 
I'd like to see smokers get a break. They already pay more than $3 billion a year in taxes over and above what they cost Medicare, so in a fair system they should get a discount.
 
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Very well put.
 
Only when that person wants premium care options, above and beyond that required for routine preventative, non-elective surgery, and hospitalization.
 
I voted for older due to the increased usage of the healthcare system that normally accompanies age.
 
The two things I would definately consider are smoking and being overweight (and not by a little, but to be clinicly obese). Both of these have an adverse affect on health more than any of the factors listed and they are both entirely behavioral, a matter of choice.
 
I'd like to see smokers get a break. They already pay more than $3 billion a year in taxes over and above what they cost Medicare, so in a fair system they should get a discount.

Instead of whining, smokers should stop smoking... Disgusting habit...
 
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