We need to encourage healthy people to enter the pool, without discouraging unhealthy people (thus the 2-year waiting period for all comers).

Next, I suggest a plan in which benefits vary in direct contributions to premiums made.
I also suggest that total benefits be reduced by a pecentage of claims incurred, so that participants “get credit” for being part of the pool.
The credits can increase based on length of time in the pool.
Don Levit
This is a defined contributiuon approach, which has some similarities to community rating.

But what would the implications be for sick people? It makes me nervous to open the door to any more variance in premiums based on claims status (we already have this provision in individual health insurance – initial underwriting uses health history to set premiums for most policies in Colorado) because it would seem to make it even harder for sick people to get and keep health insurance.

But I agree that there needs to be a focus on providing incentives for healthy people to maintain health insurance, rather than a system that rewards people who wait until they need care before seeking out health insurance. Otherwise there’s no effective way to spread costs across the whole population.

Second, we have to design plans in which the healthy are provided incentives to enter and stay in the insurance pools.
I have been reading the debates in the House and Senate in regards to Social Security, right before it was passed.
One of the suggestions regarding unemployment insurance was to provide employers the option of setting up their own reserve funds, as opposed to all the employers contributing to one state fund.
The advantage of this option was to reward those employers who had low unemployment insurance claims, to provide them with lower premiums, or maybe no premiums for a time, if overfunded.
A similar provision should be made for individuals who have low insurance claims.
Don Levit