I read an interesting article today regarding the Myth of Health Insurance (http://tinyurl.com/c7glos if anyone cares to read the whole thing). The long and short of it is this - health "insurance" has little to do with health and nothing at all to do with insurance. Before you dismiss him as a zealot, ask yourself a couple of questions:
1) The last time I bought car insurance, did I immediately go out and wreck it so I could make a claim?
2) Have I filed a homeowners claim recently with (Allstate, State Farm, etc) because the faucet was leaky, the downspout came off, or the flooring was dirty?
The truth is, insurance, by definition, is transferring the risk off of yourself onto someone else in return for paying a premium; that way they assume responsibility should something go wrong. In other words, no one buys car insurance, homeowners insurance, life insurance, or any other kind of insurance with the itching irrational desire to go out and use it! Yet that's the idea to which many subscribe - I pay a premium, the insurance company should cover everything!
The question we must ask ourselves is, is health care an inalienable right or is it a commodity to be sold on the open market place? The author's position is that is it "immoral and impractical" for us to reject personal responsibility for our health and take a position of entitlement when it comes to health. After all, why should I pay the same premium as you when you've drank your liver under the table, smoked your lungs to hell itself and ate your way into stardom on The Biggest Loser?
The moral dilema is not whether or not we should provide health care to all, but rather at what point our eschewing of personal responsibility becomes negligent enough to punish.
I have to say, he's got a point.
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