“Most individuals would want to avoid trivial medical expenses” that’s actually a huge problem. In our societies, people tend to postpone going to see doctors (because it costs money, even if most is paid back by social security (like it is here) or private insurances, and because it takes precious time). But for many disease, the earlier they get treated, the easier is the treatment. You have a small weird thing on your skin, you don’t go see a doctor for that, and it happens to be a skin cancer and you die, or it happens to be a wart, and when you finally go see a doctor, it has multiplied and you may even have contaged someone else. The key for efficient healthcare is frequently going to the doctor to check you don’t have anything. Maybe there could be a number of checks/examens that are not taken from your $2 millions ? A visit to the dentist and general practitioner for a checkup a year and a few things like that ?
You only consider “life”, but not in which condition. So how does your mechanism handle issues like eyesight ? How does it handle artificial limbs for people who require them ? The interests of the person and of the insurance will be opposite in those issues—the insurance doesn’t care if you’re blind and limbless, as long as you’re alive, but the person may prefer to be able to see and move around, even if it means a risk of dying earlier (surgery always has a risk).
In response to the second point, perhaps one could insure, not a number of years of life, but instead some number of QUALYs, perhaps to be had within a certain time-frame.
So then, if you go blind (which I think has a disability weighting of about 0.5), the insurance company would have to cough up the proportion of the money corresponding to the QUALYs you’d lose.
So suppose I’m in a contract for 80 QUALYs up to the age of 80, and the value of the policy is $2 million. Then if I go blind at 35, I’ve lost (40/2) = 20 QUALYs, which is 1⁄4 of my policy, and so I’d get $500,000.
Perhaps if there was a prospect of, say, your blindness being reversed, the company might pay out each year you were blind, or something.
Your second point is one I hadn’t considered. I suppose for some conditions, there would be a correlation between lowered quality of life and early death, in which case a ‘longevity insurance’ company would calculate quality of life as a correlated factor of longevity. For example, blindness probably has a higher rate of accidental death, so there would be some incentive for the insurance company to help, but the incentive is not as strong as the individual’s desire for the improved quality of life that sight would bring.
As an aside, it seems to me that evolution has factored these correlations in as well. We have two eyes, presumably, because an insurance policy against blindness improves the chance of procreation. Unfortunately, as individuals, we don’t necessarily want to maximize posterity, but some unique mix of longevity and posterity.
Interesting idea, but I see two problems :
“Most individuals would want to avoid trivial medical expenses” that’s actually a huge problem. In our societies, people tend to postpone going to see doctors (because it costs money, even if most is paid back by social security (like it is here) or private insurances, and because it takes precious time). But for many disease, the earlier they get treated, the easier is the treatment. You have a small weird thing on your skin, you don’t go see a doctor for that, and it happens to be a skin cancer and you die, or it happens to be a wart, and when you finally go see a doctor, it has multiplied and you may even have contaged someone else. The key for efficient healthcare is frequently going to the doctor to check you don’t have anything. Maybe there could be a number of checks/examens that are not taken from your $2 millions ? A visit to the dentist and general practitioner for a checkup a year and a few things like that ?
You only consider “life”, but not in which condition. So how does your mechanism handle issues like eyesight ? How does it handle artificial limbs for people who require them ? The interests of the person and of the insurance will be opposite in those issues—the insurance doesn’t care if you’re blind and limbless, as long as you’re alive, but the person may prefer to be able to see and move around, even if it means a risk of dying earlier (surgery always has a risk).
In response to the second point, perhaps one could insure, not a number of years of life, but instead some number of QUALYs, perhaps to be had within a certain time-frame.
So then, if you go blind (which I think has a disability weighting of about 0.5), the insurance company would have to cough up the proportion of the money corresponding to the QUALYs you’d lose.
So suppose I’m in a contract for 80 QUALYs up to the age of 80, and the value of the policy is $2 million. Then if I go blind at 35, I’ve lost (40/2) = 20 QUALYs, which is 1⁄4 of my policy, and so I’d get $500,000.
Perhaps if there was a prospect of, say, your blindness being reversed, the company might pay out each year you were blind, or something.
Your second point is one I hadn’t considered. I suppose for some conditions, there would be a correlation between lowered quality of life and early death, in which case a ‘longevity insurance’ company would calculate quality of life as a correlated factor of longevity. For example, blindness probably has a higher rate of accidental death, so there would be some incentive for the insurance company to help, but the incentive is not as strong as the individual’s desire for the improved quality of life that sight would bring.
As an aside, it seems to me that evolution has factored these correlations in as well. We have two eyes, presumably, because an insurance policy against blindness improves the chance of procreation. Unfortunately, as individuals, we don’t necessarily want to maximize posterity, but some unique mix of longevity and posterity.