(November 29, 2014 at 3:24 pm)Surgenator Wrote: Arguing two different things. Brian is agruing about a person betting if he/she will get sick. Insurance companies betting on how often and how bad will the person get sick. Who's betting and what is the bet are completely different.
Plus, you paint the insurance company as just looking to make 10% of the premiums. However, we know that is not how the insurance company actually works. Obamacare has one specific provision called the 80/20 rule. The rule generally requires health insurance companies in the individual and small group markets to spend at least 80% of the premium dollars they collect on medical care or activities to improve health care quality. And that increases to 85% for insurance companies in the large group market.
The parties can have different motivations for engaging in a betting transaction but there is only 1 betting transaction. You are conflating motivations with the actual transaction.
The reason the insurance companies make profits is because their side of the bet usually has a positive expected value. The customer generally has a negative expected value. Obama basically forced most Americans to make a bad bet with an insurance company. I think intuitively people realize this on some level which is why they dislike Obamacare.
