“Taking this case as an example, why should I pay bigger premiums for him?”
My answer would be, for the same reason his parents should pay premiums to cover *your* care if you you slip on the ice and experience a head injury that requires a six month hospitalization and further months of rehab.
This infant (and his parents) were not at choice about his condition, any more than the rest us are “at choice” about the possibility of catastrophic medical bills and/or or lifetime medical costs - we can’t know our future actual risk except in an actuarial sense that is meaningless or misleading to most people.
A lot of people are unclear about this, believing for example that a “healthy life-style” will reduce the likelihood that they will experience high lifetime medical costs, and meanwhile complaining about the cost of insuring others who appear to be taking greater risks with their health.
In fact, the opposite is true: the better your general health in youth and middle age, on the average the *greater* your lifetime medical costs as you are more likely to to live long enough to develop dementia and/or expensive multiple chronic conditions!
On this basis Obamacare (or any insurance scheme which spreads risk across the entire population) is the best deal, long term, for people in good general health as they are the most likely to otherwise face the likelihood of medical bankruptcy in old age (and such costs at the end of life are the real “Death Tax” on average Americans, BTW).
These kinds of concern are IMO the most frustrating problem when it comes to thinking realistically about politics and health insurance: lots of things which are “obviously” true are not, and many things which are true are deeply counter-intuitive.
Wrong, the best deal is for each INDIVIDUAL to save up for their own long-term health care. Any scheme where young people pay for old people’s bills is completely dependent on certain levels of population growth.
And at the same time it DISINCENTIVIZES the very population growth it needs. Suddenly a child cannot bring as much income into his family or to support himself because the tax burden on him is so high. So the parents are facing supporting the kid in their basement far into adulthood and not being able to look forward to the kid helping them much if at all with their bills in their old age.
As we’ve seen, that dynamic is killing the welfare states in most western countries, most of which are further ahead in the death spiral in that regard than we are right now.
Greatand thoughtful post.Your example is bad. The difference is I don’t walk in with a $million immediate expense.Pre Existing mean PRE existing. Not Post existing. The best solution is just to go back where we were in 2007 and beef up the ER with better service if you don’t want to apy for insurance. Midicaid already covers the poor and Midicare is an insurance that the elderly paid for years and still pay premiums. That being said— what are we doing paying for other middle class people to have an insurance policy. The premise is what? If you don’t want or won’t buy insurance go wait in the ER.