Re:Why 23andMe Terrifies Health Insurance Companies
by joosters on Wednesday November 27, 2013 @07:13PM
(#6812214)
Fair point. I was confusing/merging health insurance and some generalised form of 'health coverage' in my last post.
Even in a situation with no uncertainty, you can still have forms of personal health insurance, e.g. you have a system where everyone is enroled, everyone pays and everyone gets the same cover. The collective benefits of insurance still apply, even if one individual's outcomes and costs are known. Whether this system counts as 'healthcare insurance' or it is now a 'national health service' just depends on how you want to name it...
Insurance is designed to restructure uncertainty: it replaces a tiny risk of needing HUGE AMOUNTS OF MONEY with a 100% risk of paying a small amount of money. If the long-term health outcomes are known, as he proposed, then there is NO UNCERTAINTY about it. You either need the huge amounts of money to pay for care, or you need no money. All else being equal, the same amount of money is needed, and less money is spent on the overhead of running an insurance company and paying off the capitalists in charge of it.
Now, if you'd like to argue that society has a duty to assist someone who needs this care by transferring wealth to them to cover cost of the healthcare procedures they need, that's a perfectly legitimate thing to argue. It's also another matter.