- Health care markets work best when devoid of cross-subsidies
from the young to the old. - In health insurance, average
spending rises rather steadily by age. - Artificially raising
premiums for the youngest to pay for older plan members makes
insurance a questionable proposition. Your children should
subsidize my grandmother's health care. Or so say advocates for
the Affordable Care Act. In The New York Times, J.D. Kleinke
argues that one of the main obstacles to the U.S. health care
system functioning like a competitive marketplace are
"limitations imposed by the problematic nature of health
insurance, which requires that younger, healthier people
subsidize older, sicker ones." "While it's true that healthy
participants subsidize those who become sick in virtually any
health insurance scheme, it is dead wrong to conflate this idea
with the pernicious myth that health insurance requires the
young to subsidize the old." While it's true that healthy
participants subsidize those who become sick in virtually an