Are We Really That Much More Likely To Need Health Care?

So after moving into the District, Hedda and I discovered that many things in DC are much more expensive than in Virginia. Okay, make that pretty much everything. The DC income tax is about double, the property tax is higher, sales tax is a couple percentage points more, and that’s not to mention that things just generally cost a little bit more in the city.

But you expect that, and in theory that’s the price you pay for living in an urban area. I think of it as paying for the infrastructure that makes possible the cultural density in which I like to live. I really don’t mind.

Recently, we got around to informing our health insurance company of our move. Today, we received an adjusted premium from them that was more than double what we had been previously paying! Heather and I are both healthy individuals with very little in the way of medical expenses. So my question is this: Are we really twice as likely to require medical attention just because we live in the District of Columbia? We’re the same people, and Arlington is still a fairly urban area. By moving a whole three miles, we’ve really placed ourselves in that much more medical danger?

I call bullshit.