I cannot figure out why there is such a vast cost difference between group plans and individual policies. There is no rational reason that an unemployed or retired person has to pay nearly 2X the cost for the same coverage.
There are a few reasons for this...
The larger the pool of premium payers into an insurance system, the larger the "float" available to pay the claims that are likely to occur at any given time.
Group insurance rates are therefore discounted both because there's a guaranteed pool against which the premiums to claims ratio is largely predictable, more than on an individual basis, and because a given group plan guarantees a certain volume of patients to in-network providers, who therefore are able to guarantee bigger network discounts back to the insurance provider which is passed on to you in the form of lower premiums.
Universal healthcare costs could be much lower, but we don't have true universal healthcare just yet.
For example: I pay about $500/mo for family coverage, with zero deductible and 100% coverage on all services, procedures, diagnostics, etc. I pay a copay, and that's it. The only hitch is that for non-emergency services I have to go to a network provider, but that's not hard. Emergency copay is $150 but 100% coverage thereafter. That adds up very fast. In the past year, while my premiums were $5500 the total pre-discount cost of services my wife and I have had is around $100,000.... but closer to $20,000 after all network discounts added up.
Lastly, the other factor that comes into this is employer contributions to your healthcare spending. Under new tax guidelines, employers are now required to disclose that amount, which is non-taxable as it's never part of your income (but nonetheless a significant part of benefits), in your W-2. My employer's contribution to my healthcare coverage ON TOP of the premiums *I* paid for the year? About $15,000. This isn't the largest company I have worked for, but some companies see healthcare as an investment in employee productivity, because people lacking proper preventive care tend to be either less productive while going to work sick, or are just out sick more frequently.
This is why it gets super-expensive for the uninsured.... and expensive for me too, because by state law, ER services are covered by taxpayers. So when someone has to wait until they have kidney damage to get treatment, because they have no preventive coverage, then it costs ten times as much for the procedure as it would have if I'd have pitched in a dime or two to pay for their insurance coverage.
Moral arguments aside, NOT having universal healthcare in a society is a bad investment decision.