Economics - General Health Insurance

Why is ‘health status insurance’ better than ‘health insurance’?

If you get sick and have a non-group health insurance plan, your premiums will increase.  When you think about it, this really doesn’t make much sense.  The concept of ‘health insurance’ is that it is supposed to protect your assets in the case where your health deteriorates.

John Cochrane proposes one solution: the creation of health status insurance.  “If a health shock causes your medical-insurance premiums to rise, it pays a lump-sum payment sufficient to pay the higher medical-insurance premiums. (To deter fraud, the payment goes into a special account that can only be used for medical insurance premiums.)”

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