Is the compensation “just,” though? Seems like an awfully round number to be the result of a fair-minded analysis. The Affordable Care Act mechanism always str

Is the compensation “just,” though? Seems like an awfully round number to be the result of a fair-minded analysis. The Affordable Care Act mechanism always struck me as one somewhat fair way to do it: the insurers set a price for a more-or-less well-defined product in a well-defined market. They compete with each other on that price, then the government achieves its desired social effects by subsidizing low-income insureds in proportion to that commercially-derived price. Just saying “well, insurance is $5 now” seems less convincingly fair to the people doing the work to deliver the service. And rather less sustainable in the long run.