Sounds Like A Good Idea: High-Risk Pools

This is the third in a series of videos about campaign health proposals that “sound like a good idea.” This one explores why a Republican suggestion to establish a new federal high-risk insurance pool may not be such a good idea after all.
The first video in KHN’s “Sounds Like A Good Idea” series examined selling insurance across state lines. The second dealt with regulating drug prices.
For more information on the high-risk pools, see earlier KHN coverage: khn.org/news/ho...

[@SuperGreatSphinx]

In health insurance, equalization pools are used in countries such as Ireland, Australia, Germany and the Netherlands, to balance risks in groups of people of varying levels of health to ensure medical risks are covered for people who might otherwise be difficult to insure. The policies are also called high-risk pools and are made for covering the sickest uninsured people. For insurance companies, giving service to those citizens is deeply risky, so the government gives them some money to reduce the cost. In normal insurance markets, insurers price high-risk individuals at a higher premium to discourage them from buying insurance and offer lower-risk individuals lower premiums. That can make insurance phenomenally expensive for the elderly and those in poor health at a time that they can least afford to pay for insurance because they are not earning an income. Young people, on the other hand, for whom ill health is not a major concern, often do not buy health insurance even though it is relatively cheap for them to do so. To overcome the problem, some governments have made basic health insurance compulsory and also created a risk equalization pool to even out differences in risks carried by insurance companies in the health market. Thus, the younger and healthier people must pay into the risk equalization pool, and the older and sicker people will receive money from the equalization pool. A government agency usually assigns the risks and manages the risk pool. Governments can then subsidize health care for the unemployed or the retired by the risk pool system. The presence of a risk equalization pool and a common health benefits system makes competition more transparent between health insurers and prevents them from behaving in ways that discourage the achievement of a universal health care system for the nation.

[@SnideGreenieXD]

Fantastic video. More subscribers are deserved.

[@BlargeMan]

High risk pools would work fine if the government hadn't caused the healthcare cost crisis in the first place, we haven't had a truly free market in healthcare for half a century.

[@bradwilliams7198]

Please cite an example of a country with 1) a truly free market in healthcare, 2) healthcare which is affordable to its citizens, and 3) high risk pools which are working fine. I'm pretty sure it doesn't exist...why not? And given that it doesn't how can you prove that its existence is possible?

[@MrSquaky]

A Free Market Healthcare System would FAIL because Hospitals don't turn broke people away. You can't treat Healthcare like a Business idiot. When I walk into a store and buy a TV or Chair, and then at the register I say "I have no money" they will kick your ass out. But if I have Cancer or just got shot multiple times and walk into a Hospital they are going to immediately take care of me and give me all the help I need even I had no money on me.