Dr. Cruz sez: Just eat Green Eggs and Ham every day, and you’ll be fine.
So make the most expensive policy in a region no more than 15% more expensive than the cheapest. Heck, mandate that they cost the same.
Time to legalize and allow automated white christian-prayer based health plans. A computer recording will pray for your recovery.
What they are really toying around with here (without making it explicit) is the notion that young, healthy, people should be able to buy “low premium” health insurance that’s appropriate for their risk tolerance and risks. On the face of it, this is kinda like buying collision and comp for a new car but not for a 20 year old beater. It makes sense. For the customer. And a good political pander to those voters. But the problem is that these folks won’t be self-insuring if something outside the bounds of what they insured against comes to pass. If you wreck your car but don’t have Collision, it’s on you. If they wind up in the ER with a chronic and life-threatening heart condition “rare at their age” or accidentally get pregnant, with triplets, it probably won’t be on them.
They are also implicitly toying with the question of whether the young and healthy (and, to the extreme case, the celibate or abstain-ate, or birth control users) should subsidize the old and less healthy (and reproducing). And this seems like an argument of “fairness”. But it’s the same argument for ANY taxation from one to benefit all or others. Why should the Blue states subsidize the Red states?
invisible risk program
One of the first pieces to be ripped out of the ACA (by the GOP) was the reinsurance. And Ron, I’ll bet I know what your vote was on that one… (&#@*$$!)