“Why does the life insurance argument not apply to health insurance?”
Are you saying “why don’t we let health insurers charge in proportion to people’s risks?” The main reason is that a lot of people really don’t want that. A lot of people think of health care as something everyone is entitled to and really don’t want anyone suffering because they can’t afford coverage. These people usually would also prefer a single-payer universal healthcare system, but because of political compromises with people who see health insurance as a kind of insurance we’ve ended up in a weird hybrid scenario. (All at once: emergency rooms must treat everyone, universal mandate, smokers can be charged more, people can get high deductible plans, insurers can’t charge more for preexisting conditions.)
“Why does the life insurance argument not apply to health insurance?”
Are you saying “why don’t we let health insurers charge in proportion to people’s risks?” The main reason is that a lot of people really don’t want that. A lot of people think of health care as something everyone is entitled to and really don’t want anyone suffering because they can’t afford coverage. These people usually would also prefer a single-payer universal healthcare system, but because of political compromises with people who see health insurance as a kind of insurance we’ve ended up in a weird hybrid scenario. (All at once: emergency rooms must treat everyone, universal mandate, smokers can be charged more, people can get high deductible plans, insurers can’t charge more for preexisting conditions.)
Well, I was asking either way, which would also include “why can we let life insurance charge in proportion to people’s risk.”
A possible answer could be that people consider it more important that access is available to health insurance than life insurance.
“people consider it more important that access is available to health insurance than life insurance.”
Yes. A common way of thinking about it is that health care is a human right while life insurance is just something nice to have.