What is your view about compel and auto insurance?
I don't have an issue with compelling people to be responsible for the accidents they cause. Using the same roads with bad drivers, I'm a potential victim of their bad behavior, so I'm OK mandating financial responsibility. So far, no over weight smoker has put me in the hospital with their bad habits. The private market does a really good job providing auto insurance even if it means that the worst risks can't get car insurance they can afford, even with state funded high risk pools. Some people should be priced out of driving. As a good driver, I can get very good, cheap auto insurance because of the competition for drivers like me.
Indeed, one of the biggest problems with private health insurance is that unlike auto insurance, you are NOT currently compelled to get it.
You aren't compelled to get health insurance because unless you have assets you aren't compelled to pay for your own health care. Anyone with assets to protect gets health insurance and those with few assets and low risks don't bother, because they are better off without it. What you want to do is create a situation where people who would be better off without health insurance are forced to pay in to it. Everyone has limited resources, we all make decisions to use our resources based on what is most important to us. What those who want to push universal health insurance on the country is that they want to push what they think is important to them on someone else and get that person to use their limited resources to fund their needs. Food, shelter and education for the young wage earner might be far more important than health insurance. Should that person be compelled to put health insurance in front of those needs?
I don't have a problem making people responsible for their own healthcare, but I think they should be free to choose how they will do that, as I think people should be free to choose how they fund their own retirement. If I want to forgo health insurance, go on a strict diet/exercise regime to increase the probability of good health and then put aside a bunch of money for that unknown lightening strike of some rare unavoidable disease or accident, then I think I should be free to do that. Frankly, I don't think I should be compelled to be in the same risk pool with a bunch of morbidly obese smokers anymore than I should be compelled to be in the same risk pool with alcoholic drivers!
What is interesting is that you can see the problems inherent in compelling people to buy the insurance provided by the SSA but not in compelling people to buy some government provided healthcare.
As I see it, your biggest issue with compelling people to buy SS is that it hits the poorest hardest because it is a "tax" paid on the first dollar of income and the money from the premium payments gets mingled in with general tax revs and therefore becomes a budget football. How would government provided health insurance be any different?
BTW a little history, SS when instituted was optional, it was also 1.5% of income. Now even the Medicare portion is higher than that and almost completely unavoidable. |
