noname2200 said:
Yes. I can not see the other side of this argument. Illness and injury strike routinely and unpredictably, regardless of age/gender/race/etc. When they do, we need health care. The alternative is to live like our ancestors, and die before hitting 35. You'll be very hard-pressed to find an American who has not used our healthcare system. The most fortunate ones can go years without employing it for themselves, but they will inevitably need medical care.
I disagree with this assertion in its entirety. It is utter idiocy to voluntarily forego health care even when in one's 20's. Leaving aside the risk of unexpected catastrophe, not utilizing preventative medicine routinely leads to higher costs in the long term, as problems which could have been treated easily and cheaply balloon into long-term and expensive problems. Leaving this aside, you're ignoring the fact that even people in their 20's and 30's, who are statistically the least likely to utilize immediate medical services for themselves (and I couch that purposefully) are still quite likely, statistically speaking, to beging raising family(ies). These offspring will inevtibably and indisputably require health care. At the moment, most of these children are covered by the parents' insurance, or by the state, each of which is definitely economic activity. As for folks who are in their 40's and up, I can't understand how these people don't need health care. It's no coincidence that health care costs are mushrooming in lockstep with our aging population. EVERY American needs access to health care. And right now, they all get it, albeit to differing degrees. Which brings us to...
You're grossly misunderstanding how insurance, health and otherwise, works. Insurance is not some sock you put your pennies into, and then empty on the day you get hit by a drunk or discover you have cancer. Insurance is nothing more or less than a communal method of lessening the financial risk of encountering a disastrous event. Without it, only the extremely wealthy could ever afford to stay overnight in the hospital, let alone receive life-saving medical treatment and access to pharmaceutical drugs. The simple truth of the matter is that almost all of us would have to declare bankruptcy if we ever broke a bone or suffered a stroke. Insurance is meant to combat exactly that risk. If you're lucky, you'll never get back all the money you spent. But it's a gamble to not have it. And, to bring us back to the main point, if you don't have insurance it's a gamble that the taxpayer/hospital/some other third party is forced to pay off in your stead. As an aside, if you're arguing that insurance companies generally charge too much, you'll find that we agree. But that really is a different topic to the one at hand.
Again, insurance does not work like this. Otherwise, each individual would just keep a separate bank account for medical needs, and keep their fingers crossed that it's enough. That said, the law is not targetted at those who don't have insurance because they can not afford insurance. My understanding is that this point is addressed directly in the law: those people with insufficient income are not subject to the penalty. The law is instead targetted at all those folks who can afford insurance, but are choosing to gamble that they'll never need it, probably in the hope that they'll buy in just in time to get sick or hurt.
The slippery slope argument. However, money, and the making of it, is extremely regulated. Minimum wage, overtime, securities disclosures, interest, dividends, inheritances...any and all forms of making money are already subject to a treatise's worth of federal regulations. So money can't be a slippery slope argument, because it fell down the slope around the time the Constitution was drafted. To answer your hypothetical though, this legal sorta-precedent would only give the government that power if it did not run afoul of some other legal or constitutional restriction. I'm pretty confident that such exists. If not, we'll make one. Probably after hanging the idiot who proposed said law in the first place.
She has not. |
A) Ok
B&C)
I never said it was a "communal sock" I said that most people put in more money then they get out of their health insurance. It's pretty much the only way health insurance works. Which completely defeats the "Inevitability" arguement. Since most people are, like you said, paying money to defary risk, which ends up going to treat other people. In otherwords, most people are consuming way more then they would normally, while a few are consuming less... because MOST people will put in way more in healthcare insurance premiums, then they would in in healthcare payments for services. While only a few who suffer serious injuries... and probably more then one serious injury will consume more in healtcare services then they paid in premiums.
This completely defeats your inevitability arguement.
It's like argueing that because everybody is going to need Gasoline at some point or another, we should all pool in $100 a month even though most of us will use far less, and a few far more, because it's inevitable that we'll use gasoline. (Though the amount we'll use is probably going to be way less.)
D) Additionally, you still aren't getting it. Say I'm "John Middle Class" and I have plenty of money for health insurance but I don't buy it under the new law. I now get cancer. I go to the hospital, I don't have health insurance. They have to treat me. One of two situations occurs here.
1) I don't have enough money to pay my hospital bills! Therefore I go bankrupt, the state has to pay for it and.... I can't pay my fine either and go bankrupt. How was this fine supposed to deter me again? I go bankrupt either way.
2) I do have enough money to pay my hospital bills! So I do. Then I have to pay the fine... which was to prevent the above situation. Which it wouldn't... because, why woud it? So i'm paying extra money for... having enough money to pay my hospital bills... what?
E) It's not a slippery slope arguement, it's a direct lateral arguement.
