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Comment by electricEmu | Hacker News Reader

> I think it's unfair to force people to subsidize the healthcare of other people, regardless of the mechanism used.

This is literally car insurance in the United States. You buy insurance, put money up front for your own health, or risk paying a penality. It's also literally the ACA.

> If let health insurance companies do this, then yes, healthcare would get substantially more expensive for very risky/unhealthy people.

Unaffordable. My mother in law died from cancer recently. Coverage was impossible before; in America's free market that constantly pays out dividends. The ACA was the first time any insurance was affordable.

I'm sorry, but the views you've put forth appear to diminish the plight of others who aren't young and healthy. Those views and policies would kill my friend afflicted with an autoimmune disorder.

_Edit: spelling_

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I can't imagine how people have such an incorrect view of how insurance works.

No, car insurance is not you subsidizing other people. Car insurance is you paying in proportion to your own estimated risk. That means if your expected costs are 5x higher (nicer car, young driver, etc.) you pay 5x more.

Medical insurance in the US emphatically does not work this way. More expensive people don't pay proportionately more than cheap people, meaning that the expensive people are being subsizidized. You should be alarmed at the fact that you apparently fundamentally misunderstood the way insurance works in an open market, or what the ACA is. The only part of the ACA that is even reminiscent of car insurance is the individual mandate, which is actually way worse than car insurance because you don't need to buy car insurance just for being alive. You only need car insurance if you drive on public roads.

It's too bad that your friend has a disease, but I'd rather have them pay for it than pass the bill off to a bunch of innocent people who aren't sick. If you choose to have tunnel vision and focus on health alone, it's worth noting that the second-order effects of making other people's lives more expensive will also include worsened health from poorer nutrition, increased stress, less frequent medical consultation, etc.

"It's too bad that your friend has a disease, but I'd rather have them pay for it than pass the bill off to a bunch of innocent people who aren't sick."

His friend can't pay for it, so what you're essentially saying is you'd rather have his friend, and people who can't afford their medical care in general, die rather than have others subsidize healthcare through their taxes (or any other way). In other words, because of the current cost of healthcare, only the obscenely-rich get to live while the rest die off. That's just incredibly cruel, vile, and disgusting, but sadly, hardly a minority opinion.

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