JDPFu.com 2025

Something is Wrong Here

So, I’m in a high cost group of individuals for insurance. I’ve had many different health plans and switched from a PPO through my employer which costs about $380/month to a HD plan which started out at $168/month. It is now $214/month.

What I want in this Health Care Plan

1. Individual Accountability. If people elect to live unhealthly lifestyles, then they should have to pay more for health care and whatever solution provided should cover only a certain portion of their unhealthiness.
2. Insurance companies should be forced to place folks into risk groups of at least 10,000 and be prohibited from large differences in charges across the groups, say 10%. So a company with 100,000 employees pays $300/month ea for insurance. Then individuals with very similar plans shouldn’t be charged more than $330/month.
3. Zero exclusions for prior conditions. Period.

So basically, there is a minimal amount of coverage cost that the tax payers (me and you) will pick up and if you are obese, smoke, perform high risk activities or work, then you are responsible for paying the rest of the monthly costs of coverage. The base lined cost of coverage is for a health man, woman, child of the same age who eats right and exercises 4x a week for an hour.

How to deliver this and make certain the system isn’t gamed? I have no idea. Can smarter people than I figure this out? Probably.

Here’s a few bad ideas …

• High taxes on negative activities. Smoking creates huge health care costs. The cost of health care could be included at purchase time. So a $3 pak would now be $15 (assuming that is the real cost that complications due to smoking cause).
• Similarly, high calorie, high fat meals would carry a huge tax – perhaps 2x the meal cost. What would happen is meals would be created to fit inside the per meal healthy guidelines and cost less. What happens for people with extremely high metabolisms who can/must eat 3000 calories and still never gain weight? Should they be taxed? Athletes expending huge amounts of calories daily? What prevents someone from buying 2 smaller approved meals and eating both?
• Clothes for obese people would be taxed much higher too.
• Candy tax? Red meat tax? Cheaper fish?
• TV watching could be taxed. Anything beyond 2 hrs a day becomes very expensive. Ok, so this feels a little like big brother watching and do you not tax exercise shows? What about meditation shows?

I don’t have any real answers since none of those suggestions will actually work or be enacted. Just some thoughts.