I am rather shocked that Congressional Republicans did not have an ACA replacement written and ready to go on day 1, but it’s here now. Scott and I were discussing the proposed changes, and he was all for making older pay more to allow younger people to pay less. Because, fairness.

That’s viewing insurance premiums in yearly increments instead of over an entire lifetime. ACA isn’t making younger people pay more for other older people. It is making younger people pay more so they can pay less as they age. The electric company has a level billing option often utilized by people on a fixed income. Instead of having a 150$ bill in winter and summer with 50$ bills in spring and autumn, you have a 100$ bill each month. If viewed as just April’s bill, yeah 100$ is high. But it isn’t like your extra 50$ is going to someone else’s electrical consumption. It’s paying for electricity that you are going to use for AC in August or heat in February.

Young people don’t get screwed in the deal, really. Over an average lifetime, they are going to pay about the same amount. It’s just level billed throughout their entire life. The only way you really get screwed in the ACA system is non-medical early death (a drawn out medical problem, covered by insurance, may well offset insurance premium prepayments). Spend fifteen years paying middle aged kinda healthy person premiums in your youth and then die in a plane crash … never attaining the offsetting bonus of not paying old people premiums. But, seriously, if you die in a plane crash and the biggest downer is the money you’ve essentially wasted on pre-paying health insurance … get some priorities!

Sure, current old people got a steal (same as the first social security payments — the recipient hadn’t spent decades paying into the fund). Old people paid young healthy people premiums forty years ago. They paid middle age kinda healthy people premiums twenty years ago. And maybe they paid a couple of old people premiums before ACA became law. But they’re not looking at paying twenty years of old people premiums. They get 10-20 more years of middle age kinda healthy people premiums. Middle age people get an advantage too — they paid their twenty years of cheap young healthy person premiums and have forty years of middle age kinda healthy people premiums.