Originally Posted by dippin

No, they do not and you should know that. Some abstract principles ("risk") are the same, but other than that they are very different. There's the fact that it's employer based for the most part, that it covers routine procedures and "maintenance," and as such private insurers have set up strict rules to reduce excessive use, and that people, through no fault of their own, will, as a virtual certainty, become uninsurable.

In a perfect world, with perfect information about each individual person and how their health will be through the course of their lifetime, the pooling of risk would be along one's own lifetime distribution. I.e., the young person is paying for coverage he will need as an old person. The exclusion of preexisting conditions (for which there is no analogous exclusion in auto or home owners) means that that pooling of risk over the individual's lifetime is impossible, and generates a situation where it is more profitable to exclude those in old age and sick than it is to compete on price or services alone.