Quote:
Originally Posted by cody
I can see both sides. Alex and Rob are simply saying, don't get rid of the stick and just give the carrot to the ass cuz he'll cop a squat and ask you for another one.
Scott and company are saying, that we all have a fundamental right to carrots (health) along with police, fire, etc. The cost shouldn't be unreasonable in the scheme of things, spread out among everyone and is a worthy investment.
For the record, I'm on Scott's side. I feel like protection from debilitating disease/injury and medical bankruptcy won't demotivate the working class, but simply protect it from cruel and unusual punishment.
Does anyone know if the following statement is true or not? It's something I have been thinking.
The uninsured are a larger drain on the economy currently than they will be if we force them to get insurance, even if we have to subsidize the investment as taxpayers.
I mean, we force all drivers to have car insurance so that we're all protected from financial loss in an accident. Shouldn't the same principal apply to health insurance? When the uninsured have an emergency, doesn't the cost trickle down to everyone in the form of higher medical costs anyway? Don't we want as many people as possible to stay above the poverty line so that the economy thrives?
Oh, and also for the record, I'm not a fan of the government becoming an insurance company. I think that they should simply require all insurance companies to offer an affordable plan to everyone, but not so affordable that the insurance companies lose money. And everyone should be required to have at least that minimal plan.
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Actually, it's even better for healthcare to pay up front than auto insurance in your example. The cost of preventative medicine is many many times cheaper than the cost of treating unprevented diseases.
This is especially true in our current healthcare/insurance system, yet the insurance companies still cover very few preventative procedures... likely because they rely on denying claims later on by calling them "pre-existing" or some other such nonsense. Basically, they're able to deny enough expensive claims that it's still cheaper to allow their clients to get very sick and pay for the percentage they can't deny than to cover preventative medicine and doctor visits for all. Clearly the current insurance system is not at all geared to creating healthy individuals, but to profit, and that is exactly why it should be a gov't program, regardless if it costs more in the long run. Any healthcare system should be about keeping people healthy first, not making money. We've just got a bunch of companies that have jumped on the fact that people are willing to dump their life savings into not dying, not hurting, and not having boners. IMO, it's borderline extortion.
But as far as your last statement, I'm opposed to regulating the insurance industry that way. IMO, either a service is universal and available to everyone equally paid for by taxes and run by the gov't and accountable via our votes, or it's a free market enterprise where the only regulations are general fair business conduct type regulations. I dislike the idea of the gov't setting the cost an insurance company is allowed to charge. Instead I would rather see a universal public healthcare system that provides basic healthcare, and insurance companies that will offer services above and beyond those provided by the public system, competing with each other as they see fit. Basically, you get your preventative checkups, diabetus meds and heart transplants from the gov't, and your Viagra, botox and plastic surgery from the existing style system.