Who would you choose not to cover? The sick?
I hate to break it to you but insurance is meant to be a tax on the entire risk pool. What changed after the ACA is we couldn’t kick anyone out of the risk pool for getting sick.
Who would you choose not to cover? The sick?
I hate to break it to you but insurance is meant to be a tax on the entire risk pool. What changed after the ACA is we couldn’t kick anyone out of the risk pool for getting sick.
> Who would you choose not to cover? The sick?
You didn't read the post.
The sick are mostly the old (if you're looking at total spending), and they are already covered by Medicare.
The sick young are a minority, and are often times covered by Medicaid.
If the state covers the tail end and assuming they aren't covered already by Medicaid, there just isn't that much spending remaining.
They can get private insurance to cover the under $10k per year - but there's not really a product that covers that effectively - so unless a new insurance evolves, it still wouldn't make much sense.
The sick, young, non-medicaid tail is VERY small compared to the rest of the tail the state already covers. Just add it in. A 1% global tariff could easily cover it. You've still got 9-14% left to spend on more bombs, tax breaks for the rich, paying people to get underwater basket weaving degrees, whatever.
The premium charged for the sick, young is high enough that your math doesn't make sense. ACA plans have to pay out 80%. Since I'm paying $11k/yr for my ACA plan they are clearly paying out at least an average of $9k in claims for the average member of my cohort. (And the reality is worse as they are limited in the ratio between young and not so young, this effectively makes the young subsidize us not so young.)