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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (13427)	2/12/2010 4:49:50 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

If decreasing their mix of young healthy people resulted in an increase of 38% in their premiums, then increasing the mix of young healthy people would presumably result in a decrease in their premiums (or at least their cost per insured). Aggreed, but why would the affect be larger (unless the increase in the mix of young people was larger than the decrease that resulted in the increase in costs of 38%)? I would think the size of the affect would be the same if the increase/decrease was the same. And that same sized affect would actually result in a smaller percentage change, because the percentage would be measured from the new larger baseline. Assume costs are 100. Then you have a 38 percent increase, and they are 138. Then you have a decrease back to 100 (from an increase in young people in the mix). That's about a 27 and a half percent decrease (but its equal to the 38 percent increase from before, I'm not playing semantics to try to claim its a smaller change, it isn't a smaller change in an absolute sense, just a smaller part of the new larger baseline).