Healthy young people are less likely to buy insurance than sick older people. But if only sick older people buy insurance the payouts per insured are going to be higher. That in turn causes high premiums. Insurance works if everyone buys in, pays while they are young and relatively healthy, and gets paid healthcare when they are older and sicker.

If you “game” it, it breaks the whole system.

Now some of you might be thinking “why should a young and healthy guy like myself subsidize the old sick people?” The answer is that you will also get old.

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_heimdall 2 days ago | parent [-]

What you are describing isn't really private insurance though, its a privately run socialized healthcare system. There's nothing wrong with that, it simply isn't insurance.

	▲	koliber 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		You're right. However, all insurance needs to get more in premiums than it pays out in claims in order to be viable. The details will differ about whether there is some kind of bias for certain people to pay more and claim less. With socialized healthcare, the coverage is just much broader and there is less room for "gaming" the system.