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Re: Doing Better: Making Improvements to HealthCare.gov by 001sky on Sunday October 20, 2013 @06:30PM (#6581824)
I'm not sure this is good 'analysis'. The entire premise is for a certain subset of the population to subsidize universal coverage. The US Supreme Court backed the legislation under this rationale. It is by design a 'synthetic' tax increase.

The problem for everyone is that this is not saving anyone money on a net basis. The original purpose/goal of universal healthcare was to achieve the extension of coverage with a net synergy to the US Fed. budget (which picks up the tab for the uninsured). And this will be a failure if the risk-pool is not of proper metric.

There is a story in the NYT today that details this.

The system’s sustainability depends on getting enough healthy people to sign up, he pointed out, and if they don’t then insurers “will have to raise everyone’s premiums,” which “could create what actuaries call a ‘death spiral’: Rising premiums prompt people to drop out, causing premiums to increase even more.”

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6581817

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