Insurance Center

None of us has health insurance, really. If you develop a long-term condition such as heart disease or cancer, and then lose your job, divorce or outgrow your parents' plan, you can lose your health insurance coverage. You now have a pre-existing condition. Health insurance will be enormously expensive if you can get it at all. This can happen to anyone, with devastating consequences.

The key innovation is "health-status insurance." If a health shock causes your health insurance premiums to rise, it pays a lump-sum payment sufficient to pay the higher health insurance premiums. To deter fraud, the payment goes into a special account that can only be used for health insurance premiums.

You can always purchase health insurance with no change in out-of-pocket costs, and therefore have complete long-term health security.

When people have health-status insurance, medical insurers can be turned loose to freely compete, even though they will charge higher premiums to those with long-term illnesses.

Insurers will compete for the sickest patients, attracting them with better care rather than "cost containing" them, or denying them coverage for pre-existing conditions. Insurers will compete hard for the healthy patients too, giving us all better service at lower cost.