Quote from: Jamie de la Rosa on October 07, 2013, 01:37:35 AM
The principle behind insurance is shared risk of a payout among those who participate by paying premiums into the pool. Young people have a relatively low risk of health problems, relative to older people. They should be able to exercise their right to stay out of the insurance pool, and assume any risk on their own.
There is a major difference between health insurance and insurance against other forms of risk, just about everyone will need health care at some point in their lives. As it happens, about 80% of expenditure on health care occurs during the last 20 years of most poeple's lives.
If we took your reasoning to it's logical conclusion, the only people who would have a real incentive to pay for health insurance are those who are hitting their sixties or seventies but that wouldn't really work either, would it? Of course, pushing the utilitarian logic to the bitter end, we could also just let old people die as soon as their health starts to become an issue, no?
Also, just making another anology, do you think drivers should be allowed to have or not have car insurance based on their own evaluation of their needs?
Hugs
Donna
P.S. Last little detail, there is absolutely no evidence to support your idea that people are less careful about their life style choices and their impact on health in countries with universal health care than in the US. On the contrary as it happens, as you are probably aware, from enfant mortality rates to diabetes and heart disease (health issues closely related to obesity) , the US scores far worse than any comparable country in spite of a much higher proportion of national wealth being devoted to health expenditure. It does however beg questions on who really benefits from the existing system, the people in general or the health care "industry" ??