your insurance costs would tend to be higher.
You're introducing another variable--varying cost of insurance. Yes, there is high-risk insurance (there's a word for that but it's eluding me) and you pay a premium for it. But I think that's beside the point of whether the analogy was apt or not.
A lot of "pre-existing conditions" represent "damage already done". If you already have cancer, a bad hip, or many other conditions, there is something wrong with you already, and health insurance would generally be expected to pay for the treatment of that condition.
Sort of. There's certainly some overlap but I don't think all that much. If your cancer is in remission, for example, then you don't have existing damage that has to be treated, only a greater probability of needing treatment in the future, same as if you live on a flood plain. If you have had a heart attack and have had a stent implanted, the treatment's done, but you still live on the flood plain. Something like diabetes fits your exception where there is ongoing treatment required for the underlying condition. Even with that, though, the really pricey stuff is in the future just as is the next hurricane.
There are ways of dealing with the pre-existing condition problem even in an insurance paradigm. Higher premiums, for one. Another is to require universal coverage so that everyone gets insurance before the conditions exist, then disallow dropping coverage when the condition occurs. Then the insurance companies have a lottery environment where the costs will naturally spread themselves. Another is to have policies that cover everything but the pre-existing condition so that if you have atherosclerosis you can still be covered for a broken leg or a melanoma but not for a heart attack. |
