An Honest Proposal to Solve One Problem with Health Care
I realize that one of the main points of contention with the Obama health care laws is the requirement for coverage. I believe I have a very fair way to solve that problem.
In essence, the root of the problem is this: if you don’t pay into some from of health insurance, then you should not expect health care to be delivered to you. This is a point outside of if it’s the government providing the insurance, or a private company. It’s the same thing if say I purchase a new motorcycle and don’t get motorcycle insurance. I would expect that if I crashed and destroyed the bike, it would be a total loss. To me, that’s a fair outcome, as I knowingly took that risk. Insurance at it’s core is a way to spread risk over several people, in exchange for most of those people paying slightly more than they would have if they didn’t have insurance and payed their costs directly. That’s the core reason you shouldn’t buy insurance on things you can easily pay to replace, like your TV from Best Buy, but you really need it for things which might otherwise ruin you if you have to pay for in total, like your house or your person.
That said my proposal is simple: allow people to opt out of the insurance requirement. Essentially they would simply need to agree to something which states that in the event they need medical care, they are on the hook for the entirety of the payment. And in the event it cannot be reasonably assumed that they will be able to cover a large payment for something like a ER visit after an auto accident or say cancer treatment, then they decline to be treated.
It might sound harsh at first blush, but I believe that you would solve the problem of requiring people to purchase something, which I can understand the arguments against. And most importantly, it’s fair: meaning that if you are not contributing into the risk pool though insurance, you also don’t expect me (and other taxpayers) to cover you in the event it turns out you need something. It would make a lot of sense for the very wealthy to not have insurance as they can easily cover their own expenses. And the same way that we allow people the choice to do dangerous things like go hang gliding or base jumping, we’d allow people to take a risk with their health, so long as we were not expected to bail them out in case of an emergency.