| Torillian said:
But insurance isn't for when life is going peachy and you just need to get contacts, it's for when shit hits the fan and you couldn't possibly afford the care that's necessary to live a comfortable life. Believe me, if you ever get diagnosed with anything like that you'll be glad that insurance companies aren't totally up to the free market or they'd drop you like a bad habbit the second they could. And for that system to work those that are healthy have to pay in as well as those of us that are less so. |
Sorry, but the "health insurance" model has absolutely nothing to do with the free market. It's the result of decades of market manipulation by Government and lobbyists, read: corruption, facism.
Case in point: "insurance isn't for when life is peachy and you just need X [small service], it's for catatrophies only" (paraphrased). That's exactly what insurance is for, but it's impossible to buy an insurance product like that. Over the years, various industries and lobbyist groups have put in place mandates that health insurance policies MUST cover their products. Depending on the state, your health insurance might have all sorts of mandates for massage therapy, homeostatic, acupuncture, drug rehabilitation, gender specific coverage (no matter what gender you are). Some states have many as over 70 of these mandates, and then you now have a bunch of Federal ones on top of that.
So you have a choice: buy insurance with 70+ mandates, or buy no insurance at all (well, that choice is now gone), because health insurance companies are NOT ALLOWED to sell you insurance without the mandates, whether you want or need them.
It's like selling a game console, but mandating that you MUST include 70 games with it. That's going to raise the price by a hell of a lot. And, also, you can't let the consumer /choose/ that 70, it has to be 70 specific games, whether the consumer wants Ultimate Carp Fishing or not.
And that's the only only problem with US healthcare. You know that in some states, if somebody wants to build a new hospital, they must first get permission from a board composed of people from other hospitals? How's that for limiting competition. I want to build a new game store, but first I need permission fro Gamestop, Best Buy, Wal Mart, and anybody else who might already sell games? Fat chance of that happening. And it's not just building not hospitals... can also be expanding old hospitals, or just generally improving a hospital.
There are many more examples of problems that make the US healthcare system just rotten to the core, and they have nothing to do with the free market.
