With this change, insurers would still offer such benefits, letting consumers choose which ones they want. But insurers would likely charge substantially more for them than for bare-bones plans, which would appeal mainly to young and healthy people.
.. sicker people will gravitate toward the more-generous coverage, making it even more expensive and further stratifying the market.
Prescription-drug coverage could get caught on the wrong side of this divide, becoming ever more expensive and causing healthier people to skip it.
.. This could force the industry to reckon on a deeper level with the way it prices drugs.
.. So many medicines carry massive price tags because most patients typically pay just a small fraction of those list prices, while insurers handle the rest. That generous coverage is possible partly because everyone with insurance pays for it; healthy 27-year-olds help insure older diabetics.
.. Exposing more patients to high prices will crush demand, hurting sales. And the political pressure drugmakers already feel over prices will only intensify. The more Americans have to pay the actual list prices of drugs, the harder those prices will be to defend.