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Comment by NateDad | Hacker News Reader

"wealth-transfer mechanism from the young and healthy to the elderly and infirm"

What do you think insurance is? Everyone pays, only some people actually use it. If you get hit by a bus the day after you get insurance and need $2 million in surgery and therapy, the insurance company pays for that. And now, thanks to Obamacare, they can't just drop you.

And others have addressed the part about risking your own life. In theory, yes, that's fine, except hospitals are legally required to treat everyone regardless of insurance. So the rest of us are paying for it one way or another. This just forces the freeloaders to pay up.

Oh yeah, and it also keeps people from being dumb about not paying for insurance when most of the time it's a good idea, financially.

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Right, so, insurance is not a wealth transfer mechanism. It's a risk-pooling mechanism.

We know that driving a car is risky and we could crash, and it could cost us lots of money, but on average the risk is acceptable. Instead of casting our financial fortunes to the fates like that, we pay the average risk (actuaries ho) and a few percent to make it worth the insurers' time, and we have restructured our risk exposure: we are guaranteed a certain financial impact, but it's limited, instead of being unlimited.

BUT IF YOU'RE A CRAZY MANIAC driving your new BMW down the freeway at 120mph as a matter of routine and racking up speeding tickets left and right, you end up paying more, because your behavior is risky. If you're a super-safe driver with a cheap car, you end up paying less; you don't subsidize the maniac's premiums -- not insofar as the insurance company can help it, anyway.

Contrast with Obamacare, where young healthy people end up paying more, in order to subsidize the elderly and others at risk of health conditions. That's the wealth transfer. You can also recognize it because without governmental regulation to that effect, it wouldn't be happening.

What a devastating criticism. You opened my eyes.

Those old people should have paid for the undercoating

If you want to give more money to old people for their healthcare, that is a legitimate aim, and it would be better if we were to talk about it as an aim per se... and maybe get the money by taxing healthcare for young people (which is very regressive and quite painful for many people who are not rich young computer programmers.)

It's almost as if we should tax people proportional to their ability to pay.

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