Me too.I told myself I wouldn't post in any more healthcare discussions.....
The good credit--bad credit example reminds me of redlining. No matter how good you were with money or how much you made, if you lived in the wrong neighborhood you paid a higher interest rate. Or paid more for insurance. Or couldn't get a loan at all.Should we argue, if we have bad credit, that because somebody else with good credit has applied for the same type of loan we should be given the same rate of interest that they qualify for? That logic doesn't make sense to me.
Yes, credit decisions should be about risk, but with fairness. So if you personally make bad money decisions, you can get penalized. But if you neighborhood is poor or the wrong color, you should not get penalized.
I agree that insurance is about risk. That is why the insurance model does not work especially well for health care. Insurance companies don't want to cover people who will cost more than their premiums. People are limited in their ability to control how much health care they need. So we address this with all sorts of rules. If we decide to keep insurance companies as a mechanism to pay for health care, do as Rich suggests and drop underwriting and let the companies compete on price, not on who they will insure.
I'd say that you can't look at it as just any one health issue. I do think that a person with Type 1 diabetes who eats healthful food, exercises, doesn't smoke, etc. should have a lower premium than a person who has it but doesn't do those things.
This does sound more appealing. But who will be the health care police? Who is going to look in my fridge and see if I went out for a walk today?