It's not "Health" insurance

It's not health insurance. No one can buy a policy that ensures that you will be healthy. That's up to your own decisions about your lifestyle. The choices you make in what you eat, drink, exercise (or don't), how you drive, the risks you take in your leisure time, the riskiness of the job you do.

The insurance you pay for is mostly to spread the cost out over many years for one or two catastrophic incidents that might cost you more than you could possibly afford at the time. But the economics of it are very simple: the many pay for the catastrophies of the few. And we especially pay for the boneheads who take the greatest risks. But in the end, YOU are paying for it. It doesn't matter if the money comes from the insurance company or the government or the local charity, you are the one footing the bill (unless of course you refuse to ever support any charity, but you're still paying for 99% of it).

I was recently asked how this was different from having the government issue tickets and fines for driving infractions. Huh? The argument is that the government makes rules about driving and then enforces those rules, so why can't they make rules about "health insurance" and enforce those? The answer is enlightening:

When you get a ticket for speeding, you pay the price of your poor decision. If you kill someone because you are speeding, your price may be very high indeed, and cost you much of your worth and much of your time if you are incarcerated. So the government has, in this case, punished you for your poor decision. And in the case of a lawsuit for a wrongful death, the family of those killed may even benefit financially from your wrongdoing.

If you get sick, you have a lot of choices, including taking care of yourself, and if that is not sufficient, seeing a doctor or even receiving hospital care, etc. You pay for this privilege, whether directly or through the regular insurance premiums you pay (perhaps for most of your life!). But if you've made poor decisions throughout your life, your health may be comprimised because you chose to smoke, or chose to eat poorly, or chose to forgo exercise in order to spend more time watching your nightly TV or get your daily internet fix. You may frequent establishments in less-than-desirable parts of town, or you may talk on your phone or send text messages while driving. It may be more subtle that these; perhaps you simply chose to associate with people who guided (or misguided) you into less-than-healthy choices. But the point is that all of these are choices.

(Please note that yes, there are many health problems that are not entirely due to poor choices, especially inherited or congenital problems. But these are the minority, and fall under a different category.)

Now, when you are called to pay the piper for your lifetime of poor choices, the medical bills may be very high. So if you've been blessed to have medical insurance, you may have already paid for much of the care that you will receive. If not, you will be faced with a decision of how to pay, or to instead forgo the expensive part of the available care.

If "health care" becomes an entitlement (you may say that it already has), then who pays for the poor choices made by those without their own insurance? Yep, you know the answer. We all do. And it's been tried over and over in many places all over the world, and it doesn't work. Well, it does on the surface, but in reality it's an overall failure.

Summary: For government-enforced driving infractions, the person who makes the poor choices pays the penalty. For government-enforced "health care", the person who makes the GOOD choices pays the penalty, and those who make the poor choices get the supposed benefit. That's how it's different.