Like it or not, health care is a group project. That, of course, is what insurance is all about. Costs of care are spread around to both the temporarily healthy and the ill. In order to fund care for the ill, temporarily healthy people have to chip in so that when their own small or large disaster strikes, there will be enough there to cover that, too. Take away the healthy people, and the whole enterprise falls apart. We are all in this together—or we should be.
Truly, health care is a matter of the common good, like public schools, roads, bridges, and public transportation. I surely can’t afford to build roads, but I use them, I’m glad they’re there (most of the time), and I’m happy to contribute to their maintenance. We need everyone to be part of the pool for spreading the costs around.
That’s one good reason for putting everyone in the health care pool. It’s just practical. What happens to the uninsured now? Certainly, many uninsured are temporarily healthy. Whether they could pay for health insurance or not, they are hoping they will never get sick. When they do get sick and have to be treated in an emergency room, the costs are spread to the rest of us via higher insurance costs, but now those costs are much more expensive. And there are those who put off medical care long enough that what could have been treated easily now is more complicated, dangerous, and costly.
Practicality isn’t the only reason, or even the most compelling reason, to get everyone into the pool—but it’s an awfully fine reason. And yes, that would be universal health care.
Coming up sometime soon: another reason for universal health care.
Such turmoil around this issue. I appreciate your research. We need to do something about all this.
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