Comment by SpicyLemonZest
2 days ago
We agree that insurance is not the right way to handle health as a product, since some people predictably need much more medical treatment than others. But it’s how the US has chosen to do it, so we have to do it in a way that works. Correctly identifying a systemic issue won’t pay your medical bills.
That is not how the US has chosen to do it. The ACA prohibits using anything other than age, location, and tobacco use for premium pricing, and the ACA prohibits denying coverage (resulting in a wealth transfer from healthy to sick).
Even the age rating factor is capped at 3, so there are also massive wealth transfers from young to old.
Mathematically, health insurance premiums in the US are more tax than insurance premium.
The ACA doesn't prevent some magical fairy-dust AI from pricing premiums, though, which is currently all the rage amongst insurers. (Not because AI will be accurate or anything, but because it offers a completely opaque pricing process.)
Why not? If the only factors allowed to be used in settings premiums are age, location and smoking status, then those are the only parameters that could be input to an AI model, no?
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