The gov't isn't forcing anyone into the health insur. market, we're all already in it

[J Marston]

Accept that everyone will need health care at some point in their lives, and everyone will need some care when it is not expected. (The healthiest 20-something can break a leg, develop a tumor, etc.)

Currently, public hospitals are required to treat people. Therefore you can go without health insurance and rely on publicly mandated care without paying the cost.

So, there is a "free rider" problem or, in the lingo people seem to prefer now, a "moral hazard."

To eliminate the moral hazard, some form of mandated payment is necessary. (You can always opt to eliminate the burden on public hospitals, but I don't think people want to see accident victims denied treatment outside the local emergency room).

So there must be some form of taxpayer supported insurance, and it must be universal. The legislature has determined that a requirement to purchase from private insurance plans is the best. There is no alternative to this plan: if the current plan is scrapped, it will not be replaced by a better plan, but by nothing. Therefore the people who argue against the current system appear to be arguing on behalf of retaining the moral hazard.

[RgrF]

The dichotomy of the right wing insistence on intrusive government legislation with regard to women's health care and opposition to government intervention for overall health care is at best mind boggling.

The one thing that doesn't seem to exist in this discussion - nationally or even locally - is the sheer hypocrisy of the rhetoric from those who would impose political mandates on women and their doctors but oppose similar mandates when imposed upon themselves.

[cbelt3]

RgrF- Agreed.

[Mr Downtown]

J Marston wrote:
the people who argue against the current system appear to be arguing on behalf of retaining the moral hazard.

Well, no. Pointing out the side effects of the prescription doesn't mean you're in favor of the disease.

Under our Constitution, Congress simply doesn't have the power to require purchase of something. States do. So Congress will have to do something like Medicare-for-all to provide a national solution.