Also, this summary of the research on "adverse selection" that won the 2001 Nobel Prize for Economics.

I didnt read the 2nd one... it's... terribly long lol. But ... yeah. They can raise my insurance to $10k a year, but if I KNOW it's only

going to cost $8k for my treatments.... why would I get insurance at all?

I'm sure the technical intricacies are significant, but the basic story seems to be "only a sucker bets against a sure thing".

CoyotePace: That's the gist of it, but what's interesting is how the market falls apart when buyers know what their health costs will be.

Heinlein wrote a short story about a device that told you exactly when you would die, and how it destroyed the life insurance market.

Because, obviously, people wouldn't buy life insurance if they were going to live a long time, and would if they were going to die soon.

But in this case, it's the reverse. If you and the insurance company knew you're going to be sick, insurance would be so high that...

it's not worth buying. So the only people who would buy insurance are the people who do not know they will be sick.

Of course, in the real world, you might know you are/will be sick while the insurance company does not know.

One of the Nobel winners described how insurance companies will offer many plans to choose from, as a technique to find out what you know.

Depending on which balance of premiums and deductibles you chose, they could surmise what you knew about your own health.

"Timeline" ! Yeah, I don't want to suggest I'm poo-pooing the economic insights; it surely indicates the intractability of the problem.

appreciates you sharing that jjacek. There's a lot of talk about adverse selection and the new insurance exchanges in 2014, too.

And, a CoyotePace says - it indicates the intratcabiity of the problem