Which is why any sane health care reform will likely include a mandate requiring people like you to carry coverage; insurance works best with a large pool of risk, where coverage isn't biased towards those at most risk of making claims.
That's not a dig at you. You might be right that there's economic rationale for you to carry coverage; the risk is remote and the cost is high. That's a problem the system needs to fix.
If you fix it, try not to break it. In some european countries people shy away from starting a startup because social security contributions are very high from day one even if your income is near zero (Not so in the UK fortunately)
It's actually pretty simple to get right. Everyone must be in and everyone must pay proportional to their earnings. The key is not to have minimum contributions because that's what kills you while you earn next to nothing.
Yes, taxes work that way. And it's OK that we have such a system to re-distribute income.
But why should we confuse insurance with solidarity? We can use taxes/hand-outs to level people's income somewhat, and leave insurance to the market. Most sectors of insurance seem to work quite fine that way.
Well, I don't think it should even be called insurance! Health care is pretty close to a basic human right, IMO, and the government should provide it to everyone who needs it. So that should be funded via general tax, like any other essential service.
I wouldn't be opposed to a parallel system for people who opted out of or augmented the Govt services, that could be assessed like regular insurance, but the important thing is to have the universal basic care.
> Which is why any sane health care reform will likely include a mandate requiring people like you to carry coverage; insurance works best with a large pool of risk, where coverage isn't biased towards those at most risk of making claims.
The point you make is technically true, but seems a bit bizarre.
It's like saying "if we had an financial instrument that paid for people's airline tickets, we wouldn't want to allow people to choose to join or not join - if we did that, we'd just have all the people who like to travel a lot join, and it would cost a lot! So what we really need to do is force EVERYONE to contribute, so that there are a lot of people who get no benefits who can subsidize those people who draw a lot of benefits".
Yes, you're right - unless we do that, people who draw a lot of benefits will have to pay for a lot of benefits.
Depends if you're a believer in the "genetic lottery" (to use John Rawls's term) or not. If you believe that things like catastrophic accidents or health conditions have a large amount of "luck" involved in them, then morally speaking it's more fair to spread the cost of them out over the whole population rather than concentrating it in whoever happens to get unlucky enough to develop leukemia or get hit by a bus.
Of course, health is something that people have some amount of control over, but exactly how much is obviously a big open question. Unsurprisingly, people who are on the "winning" side of the lottery (be it health, talent, or success in things like sports and business) tend to under-estimate how much luck has to do with it, over-estimate their own contribution, and thus also over-estimate how much someone else's actions have to do with their "loss" in that lottery.
Your analogy doesn't hold, because people choose not to travel, but nobody can really choose to avoid medical attention. There are people who are --- right now --- less likely to avail themselves of care, yes; if they don't insure themselves, and others do, you have adverse selection. The term for those young people who avoid insurance is "free rider".
That's not a dig at you. You might be right that there's economic rationale for you to carry coverage; the risk is remote and the cost is high. That's a problem the system needs to fix.