The Whole Idea of Insurance Falls Apart

Health insurance, like all insurance, works by pooling risks. The healthy subsidize the sick, who could be somebody else this year and you next year. Those risks include any kind of health care a person might need from birth to death — prenatal care through hospice. No individual is likely to need all of it, but we will all need some of it eventually.

Once you start down that road [of paring insurance plans until they cover only the conditions most likely to affect you personally], it’s hard to know where to stop. If you slice and dice risks, eventually you don’t have a risk pool at all, and the whole idea of insurance falls apart.

Source: ‘I wouldn’t want to lose my mammograms,’ male GOP senator says — then immediately regrets – The Washington Post