re: #649 austin_blue

My God, man are you serious? Do you think that people over 65, wounded vets and active duty military are insurable by private companies?

I’m dead serious. Nothing in life is guaranteed, the purpose and function of insurance is to hedge against a potential occurrence. You use the term as a synonym for subsidy (i.e. in the context of the elderly, I think the Vet issue is slightly different, more on that later). The chances of the elderly incurring high medical expenses approaches unity, therefore insurance doesn’t work. So I have two issues 1) insurance and subsidy are two different things, you use insurance where subsidy is the appropriate term. 2) You presuppose that I am my brothers’ keeper, and that such ethics are good; I do not.

The vet issue is different in that the continued care is part of the contract for service (i.e. it is a form of compensation) and is therefore wholly appropriate.

As to second bit, everyone needs health insurance whether they want it or not.

No. Most do, but more importantly, it is an issue of scale. The richer one becomes, the less insurance is needed. This is called being “self insured”. Once laws are established forcing the type of insurance one must carry/provide, then this flexibility disappears.

When you get T-boned by a drunk driver and incur costs of several million dollars over the course of the rest of your severely debilitated life, who the hell do you think pays for it if you don’t have insurance?

I agree that having a high deductable plan is rational for just such instances, and plans like these are relatively cheap, since the odds of the occurrence are low. Even the ultra-rich should have something like this, but no one should be forced to.

The rest of us do through Medicaid. This is serious shit!

THAT is a different problem altogether, that leads to this problem we are currently discussing (i.e. force people to have insurance so that we can maintain a subsidy program). I believe that such programs are inappropriate, it is a moral issue in that one should not be held responsible for the maintanance of another’s life, unless he/she chooses to. To clarify a seeming contradiction, rearing children or adopting them is a different case based on the fact that children are not mature (biologically/mentally) human beings, the same would apply after one chose/committed themselves to caring for a mentally debilitated individual. In these cases, one is responsible for either caring for, or finding suitable care.