Health Care reform, you must buy insurance

The comparison to mandated auto insurance is a false one.

The auto insurance mandate is for liability coverage only, in case someone else is harmed (person or property) by your driving. There is no law in any state requiring collision or comprehensive insurance to cover one's own loss. If you run your car into a tree and you don't have collision and comprehensive insurance, too bad; you have to pay for the damages out of your own pocket (although your liability insurance would pay for the tree if it were damaged).

If your automobile is financed, the lender might require full coverage as a condition of the loan, but it's not by law. I don't finance automobiles, and as such, I carry liability only insurance on all of my vehicles. (However, the automobiles I buy don't cost $60,000 - more like $6,000. I paid $4,500 for the one I'm currently driving.)

Mandated medical insurance is more analogous to mandated collision and comprehensive insurance. If you run into a tree while skiing, and you don't have medical insurance, but emergency treatment must be given (by law), then the person should be held accountable for the cost.

There's the financial liability argument, contending that the medical system has to absorb non-payers, which is, in turn, a cost passed onto the paying customers, but that's for emergency treatment only. Shop lifting as also a cost passed onto the paying customers, but it doesn't mean we all have to buy shoppers insurance.

The mandated medical insurance is not limited to emergency treatment. If medical insurance is mandated, it should be done so for emergency treatment only, and it should give medical facilities more leeway to turn down non-emergency visits to an emergency facility. But tougher accountability laws would be a better option than mandated insurance laws.

Personally speaking, I'd rather have a catastrophic only medical insurance option, and pay for the little stuff out of my own pocket; but that option's seldom discussed. In fact, if that was the rule instead of the exception, overall medical costs would plummet.

I don't want to drive a car on public roads. Millions of Americans don't own or operate automobiles, choosing to using public transportation instead. Their choice exempts them from the auto insurance 'requirements', either collision or comprehensive as Max pointed out. There is no such exemption in the health insurance mandate; it's like requiring those who don't drive or own cars to purchase auto insurance anyway.

I was undecided on the passage of this package until a couple of weeks ago, then reached a decision. I understand the reasoning behind this mandate; it's needed if the insurance companies are going to be required to accept people with pre-existing conditions. I decided this mandate is not worth that 'benefit'.

If people want affordable health insurance, they should begin paying for it BEFORE their spleens rupture or they get AIDS. If they aren't willing to do be responsible for their own economic future, I fully support the insurance company's option to refuse to accept them or to accept them at higher rates. You may be able to convince me that children born with a medical condition should be accepted at the same rate as other children, but parents should already coverage for their children when the kids start school.

This position is not meant as a condemnation of the entire bill, just the 'mandatory purchase by consumers / mandatory acceptance by insurers' portions.

You and I both know that we pay for our health care through higher taxes. So we should call it Federally Funded Health Care. There is nothing free about it.

That being said, I am damn glad I don't live in the States. I love FFHC!

TCB

The word is meaningless if it cannot be used in any modern context.

I could say, I only paid 1% of the countries health bills, and I don't know what that amounted to. But I used a lot. 2 wart removals, dozens of doctor appointments and specialist appointments for my stomach, dozens of chiropractor visits.

..the health care costs can be written off as en expense in the books and they don't pay tax on it. But if they give it to you, it becomes part of your compensation, and that is taxable (to you).

I am in Canada, it could be different.

TCB

That's how this health care bill was written. Nothing really happens until around the reelection time. So insurnace companies that do not currently provide a policy for pre-existing conditions or have limits on a policy about preexisting conditions, don't have to provide a policy for preexisting conditions until 2014.

After that, all health care policies provided by health care insurers can't exclude policy holders based on preexisting conditions or place limits to care on the policy based on preexisting conditions.

That's because 32 million americans who don't have a health insurance policy will have to buy one, and if you look on the web for the cheapest one, you'll find, in California, that's around $144.00 per month. Take 144 and multiple that by 32 million as see what you get. That's how much money the insurance company stands to collect each month!!!

The average citizen has to pay for health insurance. Either they must buy a policy or their employer offers one and the employee has the premium cost deducted from their paycheck.

I think all those who believe their getting a freebee because they couldn't afford a policy or were turned down, will find out that before, if they couldn't afford it, they didn't have to pay. Now they don't have a choice about it and the amount the government will reimburse them isn't a lot compared to what they pay per month.

I figured Quebec was as well, but maybe not.

There is a reason Manitoba is the murder capital of Canada every year.

Again, I know its racist to say so but, when 40% of my income is lost to people on welfare, people that, simply believe they are entitled to get everything for free and not do a damn thing to earn it, I think I have paid for my right to use my freedom of speech on a public forum.