Question

Should everyone who pays into insurance risk pools be forced to pay higher health insurance premiums to cover the costs of the uninsured when they become seriously ill? Is this situation fair, especially when the higher premiums lead to the insured becoming underinsured?

What values are making the legislation mandating universal health coverage controversial in the United States?

This is for a discussio post. Please provide 125 words in your response. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Insurance risk pools comprise of a group of people whose medical costs are combined to calculate premiums. These are specially created programs to provide protection for the medically uninsurable population. These individuals are denied health insurance coverage on the basis of a pre-existing health condition. Pooling risks benefits in a way as higher costs of the less healthy get offset by relatively lower costs of the healthy. This decreases the costs of premiums for everyone though there is some increase in costs to premiums for insured. Since in America individual health insurance is too costly compared to insurance risk pools it is not possible for lower income individuals to opt for individual insurance. Now a day’s risk pools do have a waiting period for coverage of a preexisting conditions to make sure individual pay for continual coverage & make program operate with financially sound conditions. Therefore I think that though this situation leads to insured becoming underinsured but it also reduces costs of premiums compared to individual insurance plans to a great extent.

The legislation mandating universal health coverage controversial in the United States sets federal standards for health insurers offering products in both the individual and small-group markets, as well as employer-sponsored health benefit plans which puts a financial burden on providers making them to increase premium costs.