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So, keep the idiotic bargaining wars between insurance companies and hospitals that don't reduce costs but do increase administrative overhead, keep the profit pipeline, keep the cherry picking / lemon dropping, but get rid of the ability of insurance companies to lose money?

That's so cynically "privatize the gains, socialize the losses" that I'm sure the lizards will love it!

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Wouldn't that proposal get rid of the incentive of cherry-picking/lemon-dropping?

Actually you're right, it would get rid of the worst of the lemon dropping, which is when they find excuses to dump cancer patients with the least ability to retaliate (least family, least social media, whatever).

The example that was at the top of my mind when I made that claim was the cherry picking, because at this point in my life I'm a cherry, so that's what I have experience with. It's the situation where insurance companies all provide first year discounts, encouraging companies to switch every year, and then make getting set up a hassle so that relatively healthy people forego interaction with the medical system entirely.

Reinsurance wouldn't fix that problem, but that problem is much less pressing than the "dump cancer patients" problem.

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