>>I believe the insurance companies would have to set their rates for nationally available plans to account for the much higher medical costs in the most populous areas.
Why would they charge a uniform price across the country?<<
So in your conception, they'd compete by offering national plans, but those plans would cost more in some states than in others. So I could keep my plan no matter what state I moved to, but it might cost me more or less.
OK. That's one way it could work. I see the logic, in that this is how car insurance works today, though car insurance policies also vary in their basic liability coverage amounts, depending on state regulations. Car insurance is less complex than health insurance, of course.
What I'm seeing is that you have some unstated assumptions about how this would work, and I haven't made the same assumptions.
>>So they'd be more able find excuses to drop people after they become ill, and would be able to exclude more people who present higher risk.
Why would we not choose to concurrently outlaw this?<<
I thought we were talking about just implementing the idea of national plans. Nobody mentioned that we would be adding new federal regulations, too, nor what they would be. Once again, we're working from a different set of assumptions.
>>I just think that if the government is going to cover the high risk group, it might as well distribute the risk by covering everyone
Do you favor mainstreaming as a general principle or just in health insurance?<<
Just in health insurance. I think it's an area where experiences in many other countries have shown that mainstreaming works.
>>Supplemental plans are currently available to Medicare recipients, and could remain available.
Would you not anticipate a backlash when average folks are limited by cost to Medicare while the rest of us use supplemental policies or our own money to get the care we expect?<<
No, I wouldn't. People seem perfectly content in this country to let very wealthy people live in nicer homes, drive better cars, send their children to expensive private schools, etc. I don't see why they would suddenly decide that in the case of healthcare, everything had to be perfectly equal. No such backlash has occurred with Medicare, has it? |
