What bothers me is the glib assumption that there is such a thing as a "typical" insurance cost, across the entire range of need from childhood to Medicare. Is it anything more than a statistical artifact if a public plan, unable to exclude the sick and stuck insuring the indigent, found itself with a technically higher average rate? I'm just curious, but how much real significance does this statistic have? Noah seems to be panicked by it, but is it enough to bother anyone else?