Which points out the problem. Childhood asthma is a super common, yet extremely low risk condition for adults. Yet it was grounds to refuse coverage, or to rais

Which points out the problem. Childhood asthma is a super common, yet extremely low risk condition for adults. Yet it was grounds to refuse coverage, or to raise premiums on the individual, rather than price it into the overall pool. So imagine it's something high risk. "Oh, you have cancer? Yeah, we're not taking you on. Or if we do, we're going to charge you what we expect you to cost, which is going to be insanely high, to where you probably can't afford it." Net effect: you can't afford healthcare. The whole point of insurance is to spread the cost and risk widely, so that the healthy outliers help cover the cost of the unhealthy outliers. The fact that it's not always clear who those are (i.e., the healthy eating jogger who has a brain aneurysm and requires multiple expensive surgeries and months of care) should help with any perceived unfairness (though people are really, really bad at accepting that bad things can happen to them).