I want you to picture two people...

Bob Jones and John Smith.  Both are fictional, just to make that clear.  Both are 35 years old.  Both live in Los Angeles.  Both drive a 2009 Toyota Prius.  Both work and drive ten miles a day each way to work.  Both are trying to renew their automobile insurance.

Bob Jones is an excellent driver.  In 18 years of driving he's never had a single accident.  Not one single moving violation.

John Smith is a great guy, but he sucks when it comes to driving.  He's been driving for 17 years and in those 17 years he's been involved in 12 accidents.  All but one were his fault.  He's had a total of nine other moving violations, three of which took place in the last year.

Who do you think is going to pay more for his automobile insurance?  Clearly John is and it's going to cost him a lot more to get coverage.  Why?  Because he's a much bigger risk to ensure. 

So is there a point to this discussion?  Yes.  Because insurance is about insuring known and unknown risks.  The unknown risks are that both Bob and John have some risk of being involved in an automobile accident in the next year that is NOT their fault.  The known risk is the likelihood of there being an accident both Bob and John are in, within the next year, that IS their fault.  The chances of that happening to Bob are orders of magnitude lower than it happening to John, based on their prior history.  Prior history is an excellent indicator of what might happen.

Why is it that no one has a problem with automobile insurers charging more based on history and experience, but lots of people have a problem with health insurance companies doing the same, based on pre-existing conditions?  The principles are the same.  Insuring risk.  It is probably not a person's fault that they have a pre-existing condition, just as it isn't necessarily John's fault he's a really bad driver.  But we want insurers of health to cover everything and anything without regard to what it costs, thinking that insurance companies make huge profits (and there are some that do), and therefore they should just eat the cost of covering everything.

I'm going to write another message, detailing just how involved the process of providing health insurance.  But fow now, I just want you to think about why it's okay to make someone pay a much higher cost for auto insurance when they're a bigger risk to insure and it's not okay to do that when it comes to health insurance and pre-existing conditions.