Task a day insurance: How far can we anticipate what kind of insurance coverage we need? The circular reasoning of the insurance industry is that we should all buy the kind of insurance we anticipate needing and supplemental plans to fill in the gaps and long term care insurance for additional prospective payments. By changing the dialogue and having us imagine what kind of insurance coverage we might need and then selling policies for all those ifs, the insurance companies are shifting their responsibilities as businesses to the consumer.
If we must anticipate every possible event for which we do, may or anticipate needing, then we get what we have, niche insurers those that give coverage for the healthy (including check-ups and wellness fluff features), those that target people with present risks whether behavioral (such as smoking), physical (such as asthma, high blood pressure, heart disease on and on), temporal (age, childbearing). Instead of insuring against the risk of something occurring, insurance companies are providing cost-sharing for medical care, we'll pay a certain percentage of your treatment for x. This is fine, but it is not insurance and therefore, premiums should instead be more like membership dues like the Costco's of the world, pay a certain number of dollars a year and get a discount on your costs for x.
Insurance on the other hand, is supposed to pool resources from premiums in order to cover the costs of all those in a group. If everyone pays and one person has cancer, the insurance company pays the costs for that cancer patient and those who did not get cancer, will not have optimized their insurance benefits by using them. But if all cancer patients are only sold "insurance" at astronomical prices because of their cancer then their premiums are not covering risk, they are covering actual expenses. In that case, the plan is not insurance but is a group of cancer patients paying for membership in order to share the costs of their treatments.
Insurance is supposed to cover risk, that is it's only purpose. If the industry is trying to reinvent itself as a co-op of like-conditioned individuals, then membership dues should reflect actual costs. In this latter model, all unused funds would be returned to members at the end of the year.
Perhaps the answer is not to buy health insurance, but to find niche providers of cost-sharing for those services you currently need.
