Comment

What Would You Ask About Health Care?

213
zombie8/11/2009 4:08:25 pm PDT

re: #184 doppelganglander

In a sense, you already are paying for other people’s stupid decisions through your insurance premiums. Actuarial methods are used to calculate risk and set premiums accordingly. So if you have employer-provided health insurance and your lard-butt co-worker needs a quadruple bypass, your premiums may go up, depending on the size of your group. I saw this in action when I worked (as a temp with no benefits) for a small city government. One gall bladder removal and one heart attack in the same year almost caused their insurance carrier to drop them.

Doesn’t apply to me, mostly. I do not have employer-provided health insurance. My premiums pretty much stay the same, and only rise with the general inflationary rise of the whole industry (which, admittedly, is somewhat related to the principle you described, but much more distantly).