I've misinterpreted some of your previous comments. There ARE conservative bloggers and blog commenters who are arguing precisely for strict individual underwriting where the sick pay the full risk adjusted cost themselves. If you are 30 and healthy, you pay $50/mo. If you are 55 with heart disease, you pay your full individual burden. More charitable ones suggest govt subsidies if that comes to more than X% of your income (where X is usually >10 and <50). Less charitable ones say "life is unfair".

I haven't seen anything like that myself. Obviously, this is not how insurance is supposed to work, although I know some insurance companies will raise rates for high-risk customers (not just in health insurance). Even then, the rates are nowhere close to being directly equal to benefits.

If individual payments equalled individual benefits, why not just put the money in the bank? Who needs an insurance company?

I have never had a problem with the idea of government stepping in when people are in a serious crack of some kind. Keep in mind the government already supports medical care for the poor and elderly to the tune of hundreds of billions a year.

Assistance is not the same as throwing all of us onto the government dole. I don't think anyone has ever proposed putting every American on food stamps, for example.

If you have enough competition, a wide range of plans and creative ideas will take care of a lot of these things. I have never advocated a zero-regulation situation, but many of the current regulations and mandates prevent competition.

Insurance is only part of the whole medical care issue.

Other things that need to be looked at is loosening a few rules on medical practices to allow a wider range of treatment choices, and doing something about the insane level of testing required to approve new medicines. Several hundred million is a hell of a price to pay to get a drug all the way through FDA processes, and is a main reason new drugs cost so damn much. Is there some way to be more rational about this without giving up safety?