[ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine"

[spike]

From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes
Sent: Thursday, November 28, 2013 10:07 AM
To: rafal at smigrodzki.org; ExI chat list
Subject: Re: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are
"asinine"

 

On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 9:54 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki
<rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote:

### EMTALA says (you know about EMTALA, don't you?) a hospital can't
turn away a person with a medical emergency, no matter whether they
are insured or not. Why should a 26 year old be stupid enough to pay
15k per year for coverage they won't use (chronic disease and
pre-death care of the elderly), if they know they can get emergency
care for free anyway?  Rafal

 

>.Because they suffer from other non-emergency conditions that the elderly
don't, and the elderly are helping to pay for those conditions too.

>.In general, the more people who pay for a pool of medical insurance, the
cheaper it is for everyone in the pool - even when the pool covers
conditions exclusive to small fractions of the pool.  It's an economy of
scale effect, with substantial per-person dividends when the pool covers
millions of people - as in the difference between affordable and
unaffordable for many, perhaps most, people in the US.  Adrian

 

Adrian I would agree with this line of reasoning but for what I see as an
enormous flaw in the reasoning: the price differential between the highest
cost group and the lowest was dictated to be 3.  Why 3?  Did not the
architects of this system talk to the insurance people?  If they had, they
would realize the ratio should be more like in the 6 to 8 range.  If the
government wanted to dictate an arbitrary ratio, 3 is way too low.  Then to
design the system to depend on the lowest risk people to overpay was a flaw
in the design.

 

Young people, especially young men, already underestimate their health risks
for reasons easy to see: you and I did all kinds of crazy stuff back then
that we couldn't do now: played tackle football without pads for instance,
and all manner of insanity.  We would take a handful of aspirin and a few
days later all would be well.  No wonder we felt invincible.  For the most
part, we were.  Our bodies would quickly heal themselves, and even then
doctors couldn't do much for a young healthy person, unless there was an
actual broken bone.

 

So the insurance people would have told the ACA authorities that young
people, especially young men, are a very tough sell.  The price ratio should
be about 8 rather than 3.  We saw a spectacular failure in the Brosurance
ads.  They had kegstanding bros commenting that not having insurance was
crazy, as if the young men would consider crazy a bad thing.  They had a
drunken male teenager perched on a keg acknowledging he could "totally fall"
and oh how wonderful it is I am insured.  OK then, a 19 yr old drunkard
could fall off a keg.  How tall is a keg?  Would that hurt him?  Would that
ad sell a single insurance policy?

 

Then these critically necessary young males who have never even seen a slow
website are sent to this place where they are giving spinning rainbows for
minutes on end, and offered an overpriced product which they don't really
want.  

 

What could go wrong?

 

My prediction: Saturday's do-over ACA rollout will be an even more
spectacular failure than 1 October.

 

spike

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