Liberals seem to understand insurance differently than conservatives. Liberals believe insurance is meant to spread the costs of care across everyone, so that everyone pays a single price. It seems to be a variation of socialism where all differences among people are washed out. If people have fewer health problems, they should pay more to cover other people's health problems.
Of course, this encourages people to behave in ways that might be unhealthy (moral hazard) because the costs of behavior will be distributed across the rest of society. Conservatives believe in risk-profiling. People with higher risks should generally pay higher prices. They believe insurance is meant to spread the risk, but not from high risk insurees to low risk insurees but from one high-risk person to others.
For example if there are ten people, five who have an 85% chance of needing a certain treatment and five who have a 15% chance, then the former five should pay higher rates than the latter five. That's how the payments should be distributed, and it is more true for automobile insurance.
This can be more complicated for issues that people have no control over, however. If someone has a congenital condition, is it really fair that they'll have higher health costs throughout their life? Is it really fair for others to pay for those costs either?
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