bane wrote:The whole thing is predicated on the young and healthy who may otherwise choose to go uninsured, buying insurance. Without them this thing doesn't work, and without any kind of penalty, how many of those people are going to voluntarily write that check? This should be fun.
All insurance is based on this. Insurance is lifetime financing for the average cost of your healthcare. People who don't start paying when they are young and healthy are like people who don't start saving to retire until they're 50.
The fact that we have been sold a false mentality where we see insurance as a gambling game and not what it is - financing of a very, very carefully estimated major purchase - is one element of our broken health care system. The "young and healthy" are
guaranteed to die and virtually guaranteed to need healthcare in the process (unless they are eaten by bears or shot by Danzig's bodyguards for rushing at him with a pie or something)
If they opt out of that care until they verge on actually needing it, they can't afford it, and you get our current culture of unfunded long term health care for the aging and the chronically sick burdening our private and public finances. If they start making small payments early, and that money is managed well, it can pay for the average person and part of a bell curve bender. Further, if basic care and preventative care are widely available and not fenced off economically, they will be cheaper to care for in the long term.
The fact that most young people aren't logistically capable or financially ready to pay a formal premium is one of many reasons why other nations have adopted varying degrees of public health care.
The further fact that they destroy us in health care outcomes despite spending less per capita means there is at least some wisdom in the approach, although limiting real costs, limiting administrative expense, and more accessible medical schools are the other legs on the table that is healthcare in our socio-economic neighbors, and we aren't making much progress on the other three.
Our healthcare system is crisis-level broken. We should be debating about
which European or pacific rim country to steal a whole healthcare system from, rather than debating the constitutional basis of why we are dragging our feet as we are slowly hauled into the 21st century, kicking and screaming like children because someone wants to see us able to enjoy what is considered an basic state service - akin to FD, PD, highways - in other countries.