Should we be socializing the cost of Amazon Prime and life insurance?
Because that's what removing information from the pricing of premiums does, it shifts costs from higher risk individuals to lower risk individuals.
For life insurance, something like the US already does with Social Security (directly providing support payments to minors) probably makes more sense than forcing private insurers to omit information from their pricing. I'm a little less certain about disability and LTC, but those are also already somewhat socialized (Medicaid is the payer of last resort in both situations).
But for life insurance? There's nothing pernicious about someone paying the correct actuarial price for a multi-million dollar contract.
This is a good point and I suppose it’s for society to determine.
Since your genes are unchangeable (currently) it means some people in society will not be at a significant disadvantage if they can’t buy disability insurance or long term care insurance. This has ramifications throughout society.
There’s a lot to be said for paying the correct actuarial price. But I suppose you could also charge different races different prices for their actuarial differences.
So society needs to determine what things they distribute for justice. Social security is one form of this. But it seems unfair that one person with Alzheimer’s will suffer and die in a Medicaid nursing home because they can’t afford long term care insurance during their asymptomatic years while another with Alzheimer’s will use their long term care for appropriate end of life care.
There’s a separate issue of why the poor have bad end of life care. But today the current example takes place because gene testing excludes some from insurance.
