I hate the current mandate but I find the idea of letting people post a bond so that the rest of us won't be on the hook for them should they need expensive care sort of intriguing. Freeloading *is* a problem.
Posting a bond is useful for those who have so much money that they don’t need insurance. Of course, if you have so much money you don’t need insurance, you also could easily afford to buy some cut-rate insurance that met the “requirements”, and still pay for your health care out of pocket if you didn’t like your insurance company.
Why should you have to prove to the government that you can pay for your own health care? Can’t you just go without if you don’t have the money? Well, no, because we simply refuse to let people die on the sidewalk in front of a hospital because they didn’t save money or buy health insurance.
And that is the problem. So long as government refuses to let people suffer the consequences of their actions, government will be tempted to coerce people to make government’s refusal less “expensive” for government.
Frankly, the current system is working just fine. Everybody who absolutely needs critical care can get it, but it’s not so obvious that people are willing to drop health insurance and count on it. The burdens of the uninsured are largely overblown, and frankly Obamacare itself costs taxpayers far more money than we spend indirectly covering people who show up without money at the hospital.
I’ll vote for the first candidate who is willing to stand up and say that people have the RIGHT to die of curable illness if they choose to do so by not preparing themselves financially.