“You appear to misunderstand the nature of insurance, which is all about the many (with low usage) paying for the few (with high usage).”
No, you misunderstand insurance. The nature of insurance is to ensure a profit for the insurance company, which is accomplished via careful statistical analysis of individual risk factors and population averages for noteworthy health outcomes.
Insightful actuarial analysis allows insurance plans to be tailored such that the individual purchasing the plan may purchase coverage only for the types of incidents and procedures he feels necessary, while the insurance company may accurately determine the likely ultimate costs of those elements of coverage and charge a sufficient premium to make a profit.
An insurance policy is not designed to subsidize the whole population, only a halfwit or a socialist could come to that conclusion.
The price of an insurance policy is carefully calculated to recoup the average cost of insuring that specific type of individual with those specific elements of coverage, while providing the requisite profit margin for the company to continue to exist and grow. The price of an insurance policy is by no means designed to cover the costs of all health interventions among all people, nor should it, again only a halfwit or a socialist could come to that conclusion.
Insurance CANNOT exist if you force individual policy holders to pay for the risks of the whole population. It is NOT possible. But then apparently insurance is a difficult concept for some.
You can call me a half wit or a socialist as much as you want. You are an anonymous poster on an internet forum. Your name calling is just silly.
And you still misunderstand the nature of health insurance, no matter how many times you say half wit and socialist.
If you need a liver transplant (half a million bucks?), your premiums do not cover that, right? You are not paying 41,666 a month in premiums. Where does the rest of the money come from? The other members of the group. Read: the others paying into the pool of premiums for the group you are in.
It’s really not all that difficult a concept, is it? The risk is pooled. all the members pay into it, and that pool is used to pay the claims of the group’s members. Some need more, some need less. If you need more, thank the other members of the group. They covered your debt.
You wrote “The price of an insurance policy is carefully calculated to recoup the average cost of insuring that specific type of individual with those specific elements of coverage.”
You even say it yourself, the average cost. As in, spread over a population, recognizing that the claims experience of many in the population (group to use insurance talk) will be low, and a much smaller number will be higher. How do you not see that those with minimal claims experience are subsidizng those with higher claims experience?
You do realize that even with an individual policy, you are grouped with thousands of other individuals, thereby creating a group. You ain’t in this on your own.