Hacker News Reader

I hear this point a lot about the power of group purchasing. If everyone purchased their own insurance the market would be larger and be able to offer larger discounts.

Doing it at the company level doesn't make sense. Companies with larger sizes have better leverage under this model.

Would the purchasing power be greater at the state level or federal level?

View on HN

I don’t think it’s purchasing power so much as risk pool. Or really a bit of both, it’s number of healthy vs unhealthy people in the pool. Employees of a company tend to be healthier. People on ACA tend to be part time / low wage, and have more health issues. Insurance companies pass that through by charging based on risk. I imagine what would happen is this would average out, the total cost(including employer contribution) would go up for most of the hn crowd who can afford it, but down for others who currently can’t

Reply on news.ycombinator.com