Insurance is based on statistics. The insurance company is making a bet across a large number of people that the people will pay them more than they'll have to pay out.
If you're already afflicted with some illness (a 'preexisting condition') then the insurance company has a pretty good idea of what you'll cost them: more than someone like me, who's young and relatively healthy. So naturally, the rate for someone like this is significantly higher.
This becomes a problem when people think of 'insurance' as something that's a prerequisite for life rather than what it is, insurance. This is partially because as more and more people received insurance, the price kept rising and rising, because the individuals don't see them: they only see the deductible. By now, costs are getting to be so high that it's become a reality: you pretty much have to have insurance, because if you don't, and you get seriously ill, you're pretty fucked. Like, "will be owing money the rest of your life."
You hear "pre-existing condition" a lot because it became a political buzzword used to explain why Republicans want to kill your grandma.
People get all worked up about pre-existing conditions but how many people expect to be able to buy collision insurance after they've run their car into a tree? Home insurance after their house has burned to the ground? That's not insurance... that's a bail-out.
If you look at the history of health care, it didn't start out that way. Before World War II, people generally paid out of pocket for most medical expenses, but also carried health insurance for cataclysmic events.
In WWII, the US government imposed wage caps in an attempt to stop inflation.
Stuck offering the same wages, companies had to offer other perks to their employees to attract and retain the best and brightest, and often chose health insurance as one of said perks. As health insurance became too common to be considered a perk, and was just thought of as part of the standard package, companies expanded what they covered.
Eventually we got to a place where something as routine and expected as an annual checkup at the doctor's must be bargained down to a $5 copay.
The evolution of health care absolutely fascinates me. There is a pretty common thread of government intervention having far-reaching and often unseen implications.
Medical licensing, for example, is another reason why health care is so expensive. In Ye Olden Times, someone who wanted to set bones would apprentice, learn the art, and then set about it. If you broke a bone, you went to him. After medical licencing, and the expensive schooling it entails, you go to the emergency room, with all the associated costs.
Now, the obvious bright side is that a well-rounded, licensed doctor in an emergency room may recognize a secondary affliction that a bone-setter would have missed. Being forced to go to a doctor for something that's been done by tradesmen for ages probably saves lives.
But, it removes choice, and it raises costs.
How you're willing to balance those three is largely ideological.
If you're already afflicted with some illness (a 'preexisting condition') then the insurance company has a pretty good idea of what you'll cost them: more than someone like me, who's young and relatively healthy. So naturally, the rate for someone like this is significantly higher.
This becomes a problem when people think of 'insurance' as something that's a prerequisite for life rather than what it is, insurance. This is partially because as more and more people received insurance, the price kept rising and rising, because the individuals don't see them: they only see the deductible. By now, costs are getting to be so high that it's become a reality: you pretty much have to have insurance, because if you don't, and you get seriously ill, you're pretty fucked. Like, "will be owing money the rest of your life."
You hear "pre-existing condition" a lot because it became a political buzzword used to explain why Republicans want to kill your grandma.