> Health insurance is not health, and absolutely everyone who buys health insurance gets exactly what they pay for: insurance.
Part of his point is that people often pay for health "insurance" and don't receive the insurance they thought they were paying for (their "insurance" provider drops them the moment they get sick).
You can blame people for not being able to understand the plans they are buying (dozens of pages of dense, industry-specific terminology) but you might as well blame the sky for being blue.
One of the things the ACA does is make it easy to compare plans so that insurance companies actually have to compete against one another.
> If you want a thing, you should buy that thing.
There are two problems health insurance solves that make direct purchase of health care a complete non-starter.
* 1: Most people have insufficient cappitalization to accept the heavily skewed risk profile.
* 2: If you purchase emergency care at the point of provision, you are either forced to accept the terms "offered" by an effective monopoly (if you are conscious) or you are forced to pay whatever the "care" provider wants after the fact (if you are not conscious).
> You can blame people for not being able to understand the plans they are buying
Hmm, didn't mean to sound like I'm blaming people. I'm mostly just raging impotently at the fact that for most people the only meaningful way to get at health care is through health insurance, whose motivation is to not give it to you, good and hard.
Given the costs and accessibility of modern medicine, I recognize that it would also be difficult for most people to pay directly. I would prefer, though, that we did that through a single payer (government) arrangement, the same way we pay for national defense. (The difference being, of course, that national defense is required by the Constitution, and health is not.)
Part of his point is that people often pay for health "insurance" and don't receive the insurance they thought they were paying for (their "insurance" provider drops them the moment they get sick).
You can blame people for not being able to understand the plans they are buying (dozens of pages of dense, industry-specific terminology) but you might as well blame the sky for being blue.
One of the things the ACA does is make it easy to compare plans so that insurance companies actually have to compete against one another.
> If you want a thing, you should buy that thing.
There are two problems health insurance solves that make direct purchase of health care a complete non-starter.
* 1: Most people have insufficient cappitalization to accept the heavily skewed risk profile.
* 2: If you purchase emergency care at the point of provision, you are either forced to accept the terms "offered" by an effective monopoly (if you are conscious) or you are forced to pay whatever the "care" provider wants after the fact (if you are not conscious).