Here’s another good point from the book review I mentioned on Saturday. It challenges one of our most cherished and deeply held assumptions: that we have a right to health insurance paid by someone else whether it is your employer or the government. And one of the problems with such a system, the reviewer says, is that every state and federal entity imposes all kinds of regulations on insurance, requiring the policies to cover all kinds of services, including infertility treatments, contraceptives, and other things some people might find morally objectionable.p>
His analogy is apt. It’s as if we demanded our employers or the government to provide our auto insurance and the government required coverage of everything from gas to new paint jobs. And millions of people would not be covered by third-payer car insurance and would not be able to afford a car at all.
I know, it’s uncomfortable to think that we would have to pay for our own health insurance (although people who own their own businesses already do). But if free-market reforms were allowed to take place and the Shelobian web of regulations dismantled, the price would come down and be at least as affordable as car insurance, if not more, since auto insurance itself needs to be reformed as well. And there’s no reason there can’t be a safety net for the poor who cannot afford it themselves.
It’s funny but it didn’t more than a generation or two for all of us, liberal and conservative alike, to begin to take for granted things that our grandparents would never have imagined. We mindlessly expect to receive for nothing, things that our grandparents did for themselves. Are we better off because of it?
I’m not asking if health care is a right. I’m asking if the current form of third-party payer health insurance is right. Insurance is different from the product being insured for.
In other words, I have a right to health care, but do I have a right to ask someone else to pay for it?
What a great idea Stephanie! Many of these false concepts and illusions are ingrained in us as children, sometimes by our family and sometimes by teachers. Good to get them young. I’ll point my brothers and sister to you to perhaps get these books for their kids.
I pay for my own health insurance. Since I’m self-employed, this is the way things are.
Just a few days ago, I raised my deductible to $3,000. If I get run over by a truck, I’ll still be covered. Isn’t that what insurance is supposed to be for?
If I don’t get run over by a truck, and need to visit the doc or dent for a cold or cavity or anything else, you know what? I’ll shell out the bucks myself.
And Lee Penn? I do have a chronic illness. And yes, it costs me more. So? I also have the freedom to be my own boss. To me, the choice is a no-brainer.
It’s how my mom and dad brought me up.
It’s a pretty simple concept, actually.
(Way to go, Stephanie!)