That's like the completely opposite of what should happen. If you think of health insurance economically, there are income coming in (premiums) and payouts according to some risk pool. Right now the payouts are higher than they were before because of pre-existing conditions, and the income is lower because people under 26 not paying their own insurance premiums. If "healthy" people start paying lower premiums and not really lowering the payments very much since they are pretty healthy and don't really cost the insurance very much anyways, then the "unhealthy" people are going to be paying even higher premiums.

If healthcare is too expensive for most people than the only solution that works is for most people to pay less.

> The way to "fix" the exorbitant cost of healthcare is to allow young and/or healthy people to sign up for the bare minimum: a dirt-cheap catastrophic plan that covers the absolute basics and prevents personal bankruptcy.

No, that's just the way to transfer the costs back to older/sicker people, it doesn't do anything to fix the overall costs (and might drive them up by delaying care.)

Healthcare economics in the U.S. is sufficiently complicated that it defies any simple fix other than saying implement what country X is doing. However, given the massive amount of profit being generated in the system that's not likely to happen in the foreseeable future. Your fix is almost certainly not "the way to fix the exorbitant cost(s).."

There are primarily three reasons why healthcare is so expensive in the United States.

The first is because the administrative costs are much higher than in other developed countries (about 25 percent). The second is because the U.S. spends much more than other developed countries for the same things (e.g., drugs, doctors, medical equipment, services). The third is because people in the U.S. receive more medical care than people do in other developed countries (for example, they're much more likely to get expensive surgeries).

A cheap, catastrophic insurance coverage plan for young, healthy people addresses all three of these reasons.

The field of healthcare economics is a complex one. I think simplistic analysis is not sufficient.

> A cheap, catastrophic insurance coverage plan for young, healthy people addresses all three of these reasons.

No it doesn't. This is insurance, if the young healthy people aren't paying more than a bare minimum, there isn't enough money to cover the sick. You can't mandate care must be given and allow those unlikely to get sick to barely contribute, that's not the purpose of insurance which is to spread the cost and risk across the whole pool. What you propose does nothing to solve the actual problem, providing care for those who actually need it.

It's not dirt-cheap but I'm fairly happy with the $160/m plan I can get as a healthy young person (no subsidies).