I'm commenting here to explain why this post is relevant to economics, since it may not be obvious from the title. I left the title as is, because the only other titles I could think of would inevitably involve me editorializing. So I'll editorialize here instead.

“To be honest,” he said, “the whole reason I have health insurance now is to cover the cost of PrEP and doctors visits for PrEP.”

PrEP, which stands for pre-exposure prophylaxis, is a new approach to HIV prevention. Shore wanted it because he found himself using condoms less often, and knew that could be a recipe for disaster. Studies show that Truvada, the the only drug approved for PrEP, can prevent HIV infection more than 90 percent of the time when taken daily. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 275,000 gay men and 140,000 straight people in relationships with HIV-positive people could benefit from Truvada’s preventative regimen.

The problem is the expense. The drug costs $13,000 a year without insurance.

This is a textbook case of moral hazard. Dude can't be bothered to wrap it up and instead is going out of his way to purchase health insurance for the express purpose of getting a discount on a drug that costs society $13,000 per year? As a gay man, I am completely appalled. HIV prevention need not and should not cost society $13,000 per person per year when there is a trivially cheap, equally effective alternative. Health insurance should not exist to subsidize routine, anticipated purchases, and it especially should not exist to subsidize the idiotic choices of individuals whose sole basis for desiring this product is that they can't stand the sensation of a condom.

The only way I can see this being justified is that the negative externalities of HIV are so large that society should just cater to the whims of the irrational fuckwits of the world, whatever the cost, so that HIV can be eventually eradicated.

/rant