I was thinking more about that NYT story I linked to yesterday and an interesting point lept out at me.
This unfortunate fellow opted not to purchase insurance on his own and then, when diagnosed with a fatal condition, applied for insurance but was denied because he had a pre-existing, and VERY expensive condition. What was he thinking?
Insurance isn’t a discount program. It’s insurance.
I’m going to have to talk very slowly for a minute.
Insurance works like this: you make payments to a company who, in the event of an unforeseen event, pays for your expenses. The insurance company is taking a gamble that, over time, their customers will pay them more money than they actually need to use for emergencies and what not. This is why they are supremely concerned with their customers’ risk factors.
But it would be plainly idiotic for an insurance company to issue you a policy when you know you have some sort of expensive pre-existing condition. Unless, of course, you’re willing to pay more for that policy than you’re going to spend in medical care, but in that event, you’d have to be a complete moron and, in spite of the evidence to the contrary up to this point, I like to assume better of you.
I just need everyone to know that insurance, no matter who runs it, is not some sort of discount program. The price is the price and someone has to pay it. Why anyone would expect insurance companies to just jump in to pay someone else’s bills for them is a mystery to me. But why people think the government will be able to pay the price for less dollars than what people spend currently is also a bit strange.
Edit: Corrected a minor typo.
Thank you! I’ve had to explain this to people all the time, asking “You don’t pay for gas with Gas Insurance, do you?” It’s just absurd. People very simply want something for nothing.
“He was a student who had worked part time as a graphic designer and a disc jockey, but none of his employers offered health insurance.”
Yes, a 20 year old boy scrounging to make a living should have made the choice of investigating health insurance policies and budgeted his wages in order to pay the premiums.
Excuse me, sir, but that’s what insurance is.
If you want to avoid expensive medical care from some unforeseen, rare, deadly disease later in life, you buy insurance. So, if that’s the case for him, yes, he should have budgeted his wages to pay premiums. Obviously, he did not see that as a worthwhile application of his time, energy, and money, so he didn’t. It’s simply unfortunate that he developed this disease. The odds were against him.
I’m not saying that I wouldn’t make the same decision, but the decision was his to make. A portion of the outrage around government health “insurance” is that it removes that choice from our lives and forces us all to cover those who decline to pay for premiums and have bad luck.
I think your response is supposed to be sarcastic, suggesting that it would be absurd or not realistic for him to investigate/budget. But doing that investigating and budgeting, though difficult, may have saved his life.
And what Trey is pointing out here is that there is a common misunderstanding about so basic a thing as *what insurance is*. And he’s trying to clarify that in simple terms.
It is true, though, that insurance is more expensive and difficult to buy than it should be, and this makes it unobtainable for some people. Why is that? There are many reasons, but mostly it is from government regulations in the insurance market. (Mandates for covering certain treatments and conditions is just one example.)
For anyone interested in understanding these issues and workable solutions, I always recommend this article:
http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2007-winter/moral-vs-universal-health-care.asp
Great post. It’s a simple idea that gets lost in the confusion of government interference in the health care market, and you presented it in a way that (most) everyone should be able to grasp.
WELL SAID.