Texas Proud
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
- Joined
- May 16, 2005
- Messages
- 17,339
If age is considered during the underwriting and policies priced accordingly, then the pricing and the costs are in line with the risk, not artificially low. I suppose it is "artificially low" if the beginning assumption is that the "group" should be priced to include risks of the general population of potential members.
It's a strange setup as we have it now in the exchanges. We are shifting costs off the old to the young. We are shifting costs off women to men. We are shifting costs off low income people to higher income people. The only place where something close to rough underwriting is allowed is tobacco use. But underwriting is not allowed for many other voluntary decisions and behaviors that increase health costs.
I think Justice Roberts is very concerned that the Supreme Court be popular. I think he wants he and the court to be viewed as "above the fray." I wish his priorities were different.
I just want to chime in here on a group rating... since I handled it at my last job... note: we were a small firm of about 25 employees and IIRC 70 people covered...
They actually do underwriting... if you want to change from one insurance company to another they require the group to provide all information for them to price the product... if you had a group with all 20 something, the rate would be much less than one with everybody over 50 with chronic problems...
Even on renewal, they look at the prior years payout... we would get a fancy book about how many was in the group... the % of people that maxed out their deductible, how many were in each quartile etc. etc... lots of info on the costs they paid... and the rate for the next year reflected all that info...
Now, if you work for a big mega, they usually self insure so it is not an underwriten 'policy'...