Why Mandatory Health Insurance is Good

VOX The success of Medicaid expansion, explained in 5 charts

The above may fit in well with the discussion we were having at Obamacare vs TrumpCare  In summary, I believe that every citizen in the USA should be required to:

• buy good full coverage insurance
• if they can not afford it, it should be subsidized or free

My logic is pretty simple...  When something serious happens people go BROKE, then us tax payers and/or consumers end up paying the bills + collection / bankruptcy expenses... (ie bankruptcies, uncollectible debts, etc)  The "patients" poor choice costs us MONEY...

We force car drivers to carry liability insurance for the exact same reason. We want to make sure that the driver has the money to pay their bills in case something BAD happens. We do not want some one else to pay for their buying a bargain policy or driving without insurance.  Therefore society through the government demands that people buy insurance of some minimally acceptable amount / type.

And yet for some reason Conservatives like Jerry have no problem with letting people save money today by going along without health insurance. Which of course is like letting people drive with NO LIABILITY INSURANCE.  I mean we know that some percentage of these people will  get cancer. heart disease, or some very expensive illness...  And unfortunately we tax payers / consumers will end up paying their bills since we are not allowed to let them die as a consequence for their being CHEAP and TAKING A BAD RISK...

Therefore, mandating appropriate healthcare insurance is to protect all of us from irresponsible people transferring their expenses to us. (ie bankruptcies, uncollectible debts, etc)

Below are a couple of comments from Jerry and Sean regarding my belief.

"...let people decide if they need liability insurance on their car." Not what I said at all. Liability insurance is mandated because it affects others (though many cannot afford it and don't have it, which is why I need "uninsured motorist" coverage), but if I want comprehensive I can CHOOSE to have it and pay for it. Health insurance is ALL for your benefit, so none should be mandatory by YOUR analogy.

And you are still not grasping the difference between health care and health insurance. Those who are under-insured, deliberately or by virtue of it being unaffordable [under the "Affordable Care Act" :-( ] still get health care through the emergency room, or charity, or by running up bills they can or cannot pay. Yes, we "all" (some of us far more than others) "pay" for that care, in some fashion. But YOUR solution would have us all pay for INSURANCE against those events, whether needed or not, whether wanted or not, or usable or not, or whether the cost of care could be covered by any of a number of other mechanisms. And that drives UP costs for everybody, meaning FEWER people can afford coverage. It's just backwards.

Just look at what happened after Obamacare mandated that everybody have "acceptable" insurance. Emergency room visits for basic care went UP. People lost the plans they liked. Doctors left the profession rather than accept the mandates and poor reimbursements. Like all liberal utopias, Obamacare was long on good intentions and short of sensible policy. Trumpcare, regardless of what it may be, must be better." Jerry

"Here in the real world, the number of licensed doctors in the U.S. increased by 100,000 between 2010 and 2016. A Census of Actively Licensed Physicians in the United States, 2016" Sean