Quote:Actually, auto insurance rates would go way down if people who didn't own autos were forced to buy auto insurance. If you don't own a car, you won't ever file a claim.
Really, the only way insurance works is if there is a broad base of coverage that includes people who do not file claims. Hence the mandate that everyone have health insurance. You have to force healthy people to buy health insurance, otherwise, only sick people would buy health insurance, and either health insurance companies would be bankrupted, or insurance rates would go to the moon.
My personal view is that I am subsidizing the health care of people who eat too many potato chips and drink too many milk shakes. Watching fat people walk around with subsidized health care does rankle me. Why force me to subsidize their health care when they won't do the simplest thing, which is lose a few pounds so they don't develop diabetes and heart disease. I'm forced to subsidize their health insurance, so why not force them to make better choices? Is there a single healthy thing on the menu at Sonic? I see commercials for Sonic, and I think, my taxes went up because of them. They're giving people diabetes and heart disease, and I'm paying for it with Obamacare tax surcharges. So do we outlaw Sonic, or do we let people die in the streets because they don't have health insurance? A large part of me says, I'm subsidizing people's bad lifestyle choices. We need to be cruel to these people. Another part of me says, I don't want to see a society where people are forced to live with their lifestyle choices. Nobody wants to recreate Dickensian England with very rich people stepping over very poor people who are lying in the street dying because they don't have health insurance. I'll pay some taxes to level things out a little.
It's a difficult issue, a lot more difficult than proponents and opponents seem to want to admit.
Basically, liberals want to take care of people, and conservatives want people to live with the consequences of their actions. I am a little of both. In my view, both liberals and conservatives like to see things in very simple terms, and don't seem to want to admit that things are complicated.
Your fundamental premise is inaccurate and Obamacare proved it. When you eliminate price competition (the check on prices) and you infinitely increase demand (the driver of prices) then the inevitable result is MASSIVE inflation.
You need a.) a wide range of options to provide a good or service. The ACA created a market so heavily regulated that in some cases people only have one insurance option to buy from. b.) you also need alternative goods and services to any good or service. The conventional health care system should have competition from emerging methods of delivering health care. Concierge practices, allowing more trained individuals to write low level prescriptions, alternative medicine whatever. That keeps the demand and cost of the regular system down and also provides incentives to innovate and lower operating costs. What you have now are stringent regulations on what you have to buy and what constitutes insurance. We know over time that leads to less options and more money out of pocket.
Moreover, we have to define what insurance. Insurance is an aleatory contract based on an unforeseen risk. That's a lot different than prepayment of a predictable event. The current system mixes these two risk classes creating a mess of actuarial inefficiency. There should be one system for the event that you get run over buy a bus and another system for basic check ups, low level stitches, low level sick visits, elective mole removal etc. That would allow healthier people to participate in the catastrophic coverage providing more surety to the risk pool at low cost while not having to spend all their money worrying about the general practices.
The greater the amount and diversity of choice, the better the result for the consumer. We all want to take care of the indigent. No one is talking about walking over people in the street. That's the false argument progressives make any time we talk about an entitlement. If we had a privatized retirement system instead of an old age insurance program (social security) then we could have taken a portion of the cap gains taxes and provided care for those too poor to have saved any money. Instead we lumped all of society into a broken system and stole trillions of dollars of potential earnings creating more poverty. In the case of healthcare we can subsidize the catastrophic care for the indigent without creating a system where those on completely free government assisted healthcare make it so expensive for actual tax payers that its the indigent at the front of the line and those out tilling the field who can't afford their deductibles.
