[perl4ever]

The analogy to car insurance comes up over and over, but I think it's flawed.

Pre-existing conditions are not defined by the average paid out in claims to a person.

It's normal to have a deductible that's over $5K and is not met in a typical year, and one or more pre-existing conditions. So it bewilders me how people keep debating as though the contrary were typical.

The question is not whether a person should have their predictable costs paid for through "insurance", but whether a person should be able to get insurance for catastrophic costs, if they are considered to have a non-quantifiable risk.

There is a fundamental inefficiency in a market that discriminates against sick people, not just a lack of "social justice" or whatever. If insurance companies are allowed to discriminate against pre-existing conditions, then they have to charge not just enough to cover the true risk of the high risk customers, but enough to cover the risk of being wrong about the risk - insurance against "unknown unknowns", adverse selection.

"Fairness" often costs more money.