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Devils advocate.
If you're significantly more likely to get cancer, why shouldn't you pay a higher rate? It's not fair to me who doesn't have same likelihood.
It’s also not fair to the people who are more likely to get cancer. People don’t choose their genes and the point of society is to reduce the negative effects of things people don’t choose.
Angels advocate.
All you are really saying is "sucks to suck" which isn't so much a position on policy as it is a statement that under a failed social safety net you believe you would be fine.
Let me tell you something about your future, your body will (hopefully) fall apart slowly. It will be an awful, painful ordeal. Do you want the society you are in to target you as it is happening because your body is breaking down or semi-permanently injured?
Let me answer that one for you, you don't.
It's all about stats though, rates. If you have two separate groups that are under insurance umbrellas. Say two separate companies all insured together. One tests with high likelihood for cancer, so across the large group of 5000 people you can be pretty sure about 500 will get cancer and or heart disease. The other only 100 out of 5000.
Those diseases don't account for all insurance expenses, so we'll say 5 times the cancer rate means 3 times the total expense. If it's costing three times as much to insure one group as the other, where should that money come from then? They either need to start paying more overall or folks will start being denied care since the funds aren't there. Why shouldn't the group pay more. But then, if it's more expensive at group a, why wouldn't those who are not predisposed jump over to group b?
If the US nationalizes healthcare, it also seems unfair that California has to pay for the greatly increased heart disease and obesity rates of Oklahoma and Mississippi.
I acknowledge this is a criticism of insurance as a whole, but we're seeing these effects across healthcare but also home insurance from climate change.
If I own a house in a forest that's dried out and dying from bark beetles, sudden oak death, and drought, my insurance is going to cost like 5 times the average. And rightfully so.
You have used many words and referenced many concepts and yet you haven't changed your argument at all, you are still just saying your position is "it sucks to suck".
If you don't care about ethics and empathy and rather subscribe to a rugged individualism where all problems are framed as failures of individuals and our responsibility to care for others only extends so far as the suffering person "deserves", what is there to discuss?
Your position is you don't care, one day when your turn comes to be one of those people who needs more help than others your tune will change mighty fast... but if we listen to voices like yours it will be far too late for you then.
I would prefer to point out how foolish your position is and build a world that will care for you when the day comes that you suddenly need more help than you ever thought you would.
I'm not saying don't give care to folks. Just adjust premiums based on risk. If I picked up smoking my life insurance rates would go up nearly 5x. If I moved to a dead tinderbox forest my home insurance would increase 4x. If I get in an accident or get a DUI my car insurance doubles.
It's important to take risk into account for insurance premiums, because if you have more claims than you're prepared for you run out of funds to pay for all the care. Whether it's nationalized or a private insurance provider, the funds need to be there for the statistical average of care or reimbursement needed.
If the funds aren't there you end up with situations where folks just get booted off the insurance, or companies refuse to pay. That's worse. That's much worse than just paying more.
You just equated doing things that you have at least semi active control over to someone’s genetics predisposing them to certain medical conditions, which they have 0 control over. In their markets, risk is supposed to balance out and make people make less risky choices. You can’t derisk your alleles.
Health insurance is a fundamentally flawed idea, and not because of preexisting conditions, but because of profiteering. We should just optimize the health of our citizens directly by taxing wealthy individuals and companies and paying for the most effective healthcare for everyone. It’s more cost effective for society at large and also serves the greatest cross section of our community, but there just won’t be a profit motive (well there is a motive that by doing better healthcare for everyone in more cost effective ways you lower the overall cost of healthcare for the society, which isn’t so much maximizing profit as it is minimizing cost-benefit ratio).
And by the way, it may be a paper next year finds an allele you have increases your risk of some horrendous disease. The people in this thread are arguing with you that you should still be able to afford healthcare. You’re arguing you shouldn’t.
Unfortunately we aren't talking about control. We're talking about risk.
Literally the entire point of insurance is that everyone pays into a pool which is used to subsidize the people with bad luck who will have to claim more than their peers.
But what if you can choose your pool?
You don't. You don't pick your genetics, your family, the accidents that happen in your life, or even (to a certain extent) your environment.
If you want to save money on health insurance, stop letting insurance and healthcare companies fuck all of us for their own profit.