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You don't want to pay for insurance. Maybe you're young and/or healthy. Maybe you swear by natural remedies. Maybe you think our current medical system is little more than quackery, only slightly improved from the Middle Ages. Whatever.
Only, it's not that simple. Group plans work by spreading the risk. Put bluntly, the healty subsidize the sick. It only works by getting as many healthy people as possible to "buy" insurance. In this respect, it really doesn't matter if it's a single-payer government system, or a government subsidizing for-profit insurance companies. The healthy subsidize the sick. The alternative is only the rich get medical care. If you think it'slike that now, it's no where near as bad as it could be.
You cannot have an effective system if healthy people opt out of coverage, don't pay into the system and then want to buy into it once they get sick. It just won't work. That's why health insurance companies have pre-existing condition clauses. In theory, these exclusions make sense. After all, you can't buy storm insurance for your home when a Hurricane Warning has been issued for your area. I realize the awful reality is corporations using any angle they can to label something a "pre-existing condition" so they don't have to pay claims.
So, we have two options to get everyone access to coverage, regardless of financial sitaution. One is a single payer system in which we all pay higher taxes and all access is the same. Of course the insurance lobby is going to fight this tooth and nail because it is their very existence we are debating. There are enough people in this country who like feeling like they have a choice and believe the horror stories out of England and Canada, but forget the ones in their own country and they will take the side of the insurance companies on this. Or, we figure if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. We come up with a hodge podge of government funding and private companies. Of course, our taxes will go up anyway, but I'd like to think if government money was involved, there'd be more oversight of the insurance and medical providers.
But, in this system, everyone has to have coverage or the healthy will wait until they are sick to buy coverage and then plead poverty. Your taxes would go up the most in this type of scenario because only those with high medical bills have insurance.
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