• curiousaur@reddthat.com
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    2 months ago

    I’m not saying don’t give care to folks. Just adjust premiums based on risk. If I picked up smoking my life insurance rates would go up nearly 5x. If I moved to a dead tinderbox forest my home insurance would increase 4x. If I get in an accident or get a DUI my car insurance doubles.

    It’s important to take risk into account for insurance premiums, because if you have more claims than you’re prepared for you run out of funds to pay for all the care. Whether it’s nationalized or a private insurance provider, the funds need to be there for the statistical average of care or reimbursement needed.

    If the funds aren’t there you end up with situations where folks just get booted off the insurance, or companies refuse to pay. That’s worse. That’s much worse than just paying more.

    • AliasAKA@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      You just equated doing things that you have at least semi active control over to someone’s genetics predisposing them to certain medical conditions, which they have 0 control over. In their markets, risk is supposed to balance out and make people make less risky choices. You can’t derisk your alleles.

      Health insurance is a fundamentally flawed idea, and not because of preexisting conditions, but because of profiteering. We should just optimize the health of our citizens directly by taxing wealthy individuals and companies and paying for the most effective healthcare for everyone. It’s more cost effective for society at large and also serves the greatest cross section of our community, but there just won’t be a profit motive (well there is a motive that by doing better healthcare for everyone in more cost effective ways you lower the overall cost of healthcare for the society, which isn’t so much maximizing profit as it is minimizing cost-benefit ratio).

      And by the way, it may be a paper next year finds an allele you have increases your risk of some horrendous disease. The people in this thread are arguing with you that you should still be able to afford healthcare. You’re arguing you shouldn’t.