Less demand means less people in the insurance risk pool = much higher premiums.
You may BOTH be right, because the millions “dropping out of the health insurance market” under RyanCare doesn’t necessarily equate to those same millions not being in a risk pool. They’re not in Aetna’s risk pool; they’re not in the Blue Cross risk pool, but they aren’t removed from the general, national risk pool. EVERYONE is in that risk pool by virtue of living in, or traveling in, this country. You get hurt and show up at ER, you’re going to get care insured or not, citizen or not, and that care has a cost that poses a national risk.
What if we ALL just flipped the bird to the insurance industry AND government and went without any healthcare insurance, and EVERYONE were part of their own, individual or family risk pool, and we left it to individual doctors, surgeons, nurses, and hospitals to bill directly for whatever services they rendered? What if we each took responsibility to make our OWN payment arrangements for our medical debts rather act as some amorphous collective of insured persons? Talk about competition that lowers prices, would that not be achieved if health insurance companies all but evaporated — if they were largely eliminated from the cost equation; and care providers were forced to deal with all of us as individual customers, and compete with other providers for our business?
Yeah, you’d get socked with the occasional $xx,xxx hospital bill. But how often? And don’t people already, commonly, visit auto dealerships and saddle themselves with similar $xx,xxx debts that they contract to pay over three, five, or seven years’ time? OK, so that’s voluntary indebtedness v. involuntary indebtedness, but the dollars are the same, so why does that mean the payment method has to be different? Why MUST paying for a $50,000 surgery have to be so god-awful different than paying for a $50,000 SUV?
How have we been suckered into the mentality that same-dollar products and services cannot be paid off in the same way?