Comment by frognumber | Hacker News Reader

Comment by frognumber | Hacker News Reader

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It doesn't matter. There are several issues:

1) Insurance is structured to be affordable to everyone by banning discrimination. Young, healthy people subsidize old, sick people. That's okay.

2) No one is banning free speech. People are banning specific types of decision-making based on free speech.

3) Speech here isn't free. See HIPAA. It's okay -- and even important -- to protect privacy. See also FERPA, RFPA, etc.

I don't feel bad having my interest rates a little bit higher right now, in return for not having them go up if I have a horrific medical expense later. I don't think that should be factored.

This is not a debt people choose.

>Young, healthy people subsidize old, sick people. That's okay.

Assuming there is a sufficient proportion of young, healthy people such that an acceptable proportion of the young, healthy people's productivity (income) is used to subsidize old, sick people.

Are there any places in the first world where this isn’t true?

Japan, Italy and Germany are prominent example of this demographic problem. It is very obvious in japan that the country is struggling with increase cost of pension and Healthcare with the shrinking of workforce.

The US’s largest expense is healthcare for older and sicker people, between Medicare, Medicaid, and the portion of health insurance premiums that subsidized young and healthy to old and sick (due to Affordable Care Act mandating age rating factors capping premiums as a multiple of 21 year old premiums and getting rid of underwriting for any health issues other than using tobacco).

Whether or not it is “acceptable” to the population is not an objective fact, although, there is always quite a bit of grumbling about increasing premiums, and the spending as a proportion of the nation’s productive output can only increased based on the population pyramid.

And I bet that applies to every developed country.

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