Agreed, that's a huge part of health insurance, and that's why I would never consider dropping coverage. But in practice, wouldn't health insurance almost have

Agreed, that's a huge part of health insurance, and that's why I would never consider dropping coverage. But in practice, wouldn't health insurance almost have to subsidize the expenses of high-cost folks at the expense of low-cost folks? Actuarially, you'd have to manage to get exactly the average cost from each subscriber (plus an equal or proportional amount of profit) in order for that not to happen. Now I'm assuming you're strictly talking about health insurance (though the same concept applies to homeowner's insurance, etc.), but isn't subsidizing high-risk/high-cost subscribers inherent in some forms of insurance? Take a pension, for example. Some people will live much longer than expected; some will die a year after they retire. The only way to account for this, other than periodically adjusting each retiree's income based on how unhealthy they are, is to pay for the pension of one ancient retiree with the funds from one who died young.