Sorry, I don't get your point. Who doesn't have access to health care?
Sorry, I don't understand your question. I guess we're talking past each other.
The only point I was trying to make is that there are multiple ways of getting health care. A few that come to mind are:
1. cash/check/credit card;
2. voluntary pooling of risk among members of a group, aka insurance;
3. mandatory pooling of risk in a really big group, aka nationalized or socialized medicine;
4. government need-based hand-outs, such as Medicaid; and
5. private need-based hand-outs, aka charity.
There are also those who have no need for access.
As you point out, there aren't all that many people who don't have/use means #2, insurance. I was carping because so much of the debate on what to do with the rest of the people seems to be about how do we get them insurance. I think that's the wrong question. In the first place, many of them don't need or want insurance. In the second place, insurance is not the objective, access to health care is. If there are people who don't have access to health care, assuming there are such people, the debate should be about how to get them access, not necessarily via insurance. It annoys me when I hear a politician or advocacy group say that there are some number of people without health insurance as though health insurance were an end rather than a means.
I didn't mean to get you off on a tangent. Sorry.
Karen |
