Comments on: Robert Reich on the Massachusetts Health Care Plan http://truthonthemarket.com/2006/04/12/robert-reich-on-the-massachusetts-health-care-plan/ Academic commentary on law, business, economics and more Thu, 24 May 2012 02:37:46 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: SamChevre http://truthonthemarket.com/2006/04/12/robert-reich-on-the-massachusetts-health-care-plan/#comment-5730 Thu, 13 Apr 2006 17:18:22 +0000 http://www.truthonthemarket.com/2006/04/12/robert-reich-on-the-massachusetts-health-care-plan/#comment-5730 It’s worth noting that Reich is eliding a key distinction between health insurance and automobile insurance: automobile insurance is (in most states) well underwritten, and health insurance isn’t. This difference creates the cross-subsidization issue you mention.

In other words, it might be reasonable to require young people to purchase health insurance to cover their own expected costs of health care, at a price reflecting those costs; that is what we do with automobile insurance. What Massachusets is doing is requiring them to buy such insurance, and also to pay the difference between their health-care costs and the average person’s to provide care for others; that is noticeably less reasonable.

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