Ignorance fucking pisses me off.

[starpaul00]

Okay, did he REALLY just ask this on my facebook wall????

Jonathan Paget:

You know what the real problem is? Why do we *need* insurance in the first place?

Paul Herzlich:

Um, to pay for things that we can't afford when things happen to us?

Case in point: I got shot. It costs 14,000 dollars to put in a chair lift in my house to go up my stairs. Without

Comments

[grim_evergreen]

I think what Jon's really talking about is compulsory insurance. The argument that car insurance should be mandatory because we all need it, for example, limits people's freedoms on the assumption of a lack of responsibility and need on their part.

So, my rebuttal to your anecdote would be that you didn't need insurance, but you really wanted it. I cannot with good conscience make a law based on the assumption that you want insurance and that you need it, at that. I believe it should be optional. I believe Jon does too.

His question isn't very out of line.

[starpaul00]

You know what, you may be right about that--and if so, I apologize, because his question isn't out of line at all. But I actually think he was asking why we need insurance companies in the first place, like I thought. The entire time after I posted this he talked about how expensive insurance companies are and how they can't compete with other insurance companies and how they won't pay for new medical treatments and cures. He never once mentioned about freedom of the people to choose. He talked about why insurance companies suck.

[starpaul00]

By the way, in terms of car insurance: The reason it's mandatory is not because we all "need" it. The reason it's mandatory is because it protects the OTHER person involved in the crash

[starpaul00]

In terms of health care (Again, I don't know whether I agree or disagree): There are two arguments.

The first is that if you get everybody have health care, then it becomes very easy to control for costs. Without the mandate, it would be extremely hard to control for costs.

The second is similar to the car insurance issue that I just discussed above. If a person becomes extremely ill and doesn't have health care or insurance--whether by choice or not--us taxpayers end up paying for it. The doctors do treatments or life-saving surgeries and then ask for monetary compensation, but then it turns out that the person doesn't have any way to pay for it. What happens then? Our taxpayer dollars end up covering it, either in the short-run or in the long-run.