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What’s the problem with those who refuse to contribute to the insurance pool being charged more when they show up demanding to use it? The alternatives are pre-existing condition exclusion, the current mandate system, or forcing the rest of us to pay the costs of the irresponsible. Those claims paying pools don’t fill themselves.
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Means user pays, in instances as you suggest. Any further subsidies should come from charity, not the point of a gun.
Else, false dichotomy. Get govt OUT entirely. All the way down to allowing hospitals to kick out the non-ER, sue for payment, etc....then the ‘rest of us’ don’t need worry about picking up the tab.
Pre-existing != ‘insurance’. Risk pools, charity, etc. but let’s not conflate the two.
I agree, they shouldn’t be conflated.
There’s two issues involved in the user pays theory, one’s the moral (not my brother’s keeper) concept, the other’s public health. Most of the plagues that historically wiped out civilizations every century or so were related to large numbers of the afflicted and contagious spreading the disease to the healthy population. The foundation of that was lack of treatment for the vectors. If the proper concept of taxes is that they should only be used to buy things that are beneficial to us that we can’t afford to buy on our own, I’d have to put knowing I’m unlikely to get TB from that guy next to me with the cough in the category of something I don’t mind paying a little bit for.
So I guess I’d say I’m a semi-libertarian on that issue.