4 ms·

We should be able to get health insurance and bargain based on community groups or individually tax-free rather than by employer. If the entire Mormon church co

• maxxxxx 9y ago
  Just make one big risk pool nationwide. Easy to administer .
  • adventured 9y ago
    The parent was suggesting a superior risk pool. One big risk pool nation-wide isn't superior. The bottom 50% of healthcare consumers represent a mere 3% of all healthcare spending each year. That's the ideal risk pool, we know who that pool consists of: overwhelmingly younger people. 5% of healthcare consumers, are responsible for about 50% of all healthcare costs. That pool consists overwhelmingly of people over the age of 50. That's the high risk pool. Including them into any pool, isn't an improvement to the pool's cost structure. What you're arguing for is that including them is superior morally. That's a perfectly legitimate premise obviously. It's radically inferior financially/economically, if we're talking about building risk pools.
    • walshemj 9y ago
      Well eventually those young people will be over 50 and make more call on health services.
    • maxxxxx 9y ago
      Picking risk pools is not smart and I doubt it's economical either in the long run. You can pick young, healthy people first. That works for a while but then these people get older. Now you have to kick them out. This is good for short term profit but you can't run a system like that long term. If you eliminate thinking about risk pools and just insure the whole country the same you can also eliminate a lot of bureaucracy.
• qwerty456127 9y ago
  Can't it actually do this? Can't a club of people establish a nonprofit and buy insurance collectively somewhat the way corporations do?
  • virmundi 9y ago
    Probably not. States set what insurance can allow. If your state blocks small groups from getting insurance, then you’re out in the cold. http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2011/05/02/group-health-insurance-employer.html http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2011/05/02/group-health-...
    • qwerty456127 9y ago
      > States set what insurance can allow. Why? From my perspective the whole problem with healthcare and insurance is these are way far from a free markets. Wouldn't it be better if the insurance companies would just look at what people want and offer just that for the prices that make both sides interested?
      • virmundi 9y ago
        I don't think the states should have much power over this particular market. Insurance definitionally crosses state bounds. If I get in a car accident in Kentucky, Florida blue still pays my bills. This is clearly a federal commerce clause issue. If that's the case, the Feds should bust the limits. Specifically I was replying to the idea of incorporating a large group outside the bounds of a company for insurance purposes. As it stands, the states may block it.
  • zrail 9y ago
    This is something that is coming down the pike with the changes the current administration has made for "association health plans". They solve some micro problems (healthy self-employed people will be able to buy cheap group health insurance without being part of a traditional employer group) while also making the overall problem much worse (the individual exchanges become a de-facto high risk dumping ground and get way more expensive). This is a problem for high income self-employed people with preexisting conditions. They probably won't be able to buy into an association health plan and they won't get premium subsidies from the government because they make too much, which means their premiums will be a ridiculous percentage of their income. I switched from self-employed contracting to full time W2 with my biggest client back in December. The biggest reason is because they offered to pay for very good small group health insurance.