How is this creating a separate risk pool for young healthy Americans pandering? How is it bad?

Isn't the purpose of insurance to spread the risk among those who have the same level of risk? Or if there are different levels of risk then to increase the premiums of those who have a higher risk?

To assert that this plan will cause health care costs for older person to go up is another way of saying that these older or unhealthier persons will have to pay their own way. What is wrong with that?

And to assert that we should require young healthy persons to be in the same risk pool and buy the same plans as older and unhealthier persons is to create a backdoor wealth transfer from the young and healthy to others.

If you are going to do this, let's be clear what it is. Stealing from the young.

No, the purpose is not to spread the risk among people who have the same risk. It is to spread the risk among members of a group, all of whom present differing risks. That's what insurance is.

By your analogy, if you find you have liver cancer and are using a lot of health benefits, you are stealing from the healthy.

kellemonster:

How is this creating a separate risk pool for young healthy Americans pandering? How is it bad?

A community rating (where everyone pays the same) is unsustainable if there aren't healthy people paying more into the system than they use. Most of the democratic plans being considered include a community rating with the notion that sick people shouldn't have to pay more for health insurance than healthy people.

Isn't the purpose of insurance to spread the risk among those who have the same level of risk? Or if there are different levels of risk then to increase the premiums of those who have a higher risk?

As someone else has posted the idea of health insurance is to spread the risk around with different levels of risk. Think of it as if you are an excellent driver and your neighbor has accidents all the time. An insurer may charge you a little more than otherwise to be able to afford to collect money from your neighbor as well. If the insurance country only considers the individual risk they would collect not very much money from you, and your neighbor probably couldn't afford any insurance at all. A lose lose situation for the insurer. The cheapest method is to have no insurance at all (if it were legal) but carries the highest personal risk as if you crash your screwed.

To assert that this plan will cause health care costs for older person to go up is another way of saying that these older or unhealthier persons will have to pay their own way. What is wrong with that?

Medicare was established using the assumption that older people can't possibly pay for their healthcare.

And to assert that we should require young healthy persons to be in the same risk pool and buy the same plans as older and unhealthier persons is to create a backdoor wealth transfer from the young and healthy to others.

Did you just join this debate?

If you are going to do this, let's be clear what it is. Stealing from the young.

Private insurance and nationalized health services are both dependent on young people putting in more money than they are likely to use in order to pay for people who consume more of the resources. Stealing from the youth is a non-sensical statement.

Stealing from the youth is not a non-sensical statement, it is exactly what is happening

If you get liver cancer when you were in a risk pool of those with the same chance to need health care the same cost as liver cancer then you are not stealing.

If you get into an accident your car insurance goes up right? That should end the discussion about whether we put people with different level of risks into different risk pools.

Let's say the risk of needing more than $10,000 of health spending in a year is .05% per person for those who are young and healthy. (these numbers are only for example right now). So let's say that 10,000 people fit this category. Either each person needs to have a private savings account just for health care of $10,000, for a total of $100,000,000. OR we can have an insurance policy with $50,000 in place to cover all those who will actually get sick at this level. This requires only $5 a year from each person, plus overhead costs.

You ask if I just joined this debate, but did you ever take a class on economics?

You assert that a community based actuary plan isn't sustainable unless there are those who pay more into the system than they get out. First, you can do something else other than a community based actuary plan, you can actually separate by risk pools. And yes, insurance plans don't work unless some people pay in more than they will get back. In fact, a lot of people will pay in more than they get back. But under my example, they will only be paying their own risk value, they will not be subsidizing the higher risk value of other groups.

Are you just stupid? Or did you really never think of this?