Greatand thoughtful post.Your example is bad. The difference is I don’t walk in with a $million immediate expense.Pre Existing mean PRE existing. Not Post existing. The best solution is just to go back where we were in 2007 and beef up the ER with better service if you don’t want to apy for insurance. Midicaid already covers the poor and Midicare is an insurance that the elderly paid for years and still pay premiums. That being said— what are we doing paying for other middle class people to have an insurance policy. The premise is what? If you don’t want or won’t buy insurance go wait in the ER.
Yes, if you don’t prepare for your bills by buying insurance, you need to be punished for it by going broke and/or bankrupt. Last I checked, this is how every other form of insurance operates. If you don’t buy it, Uncle Sam isn’t waiting around the corner to write off your bills from a car accident or home fire free of charge for you.
“The best solution is just to go back where we were in 2007 and beef up the ER with better service if you don’t want to pay for insurance.”
To the extent that the ER is treating people able but unwilling to pay for insurance, and is unable to recover the cost of treatment from the patients, that amounts to massive cost shifting from irresponsible takers unwilling to purchase insurance to the rest of us.
I’m willing to pay taxes to subsidize someone - and especially the person working two jobs that between them barely pay for gas and rent - as long as they pay *something* based on their ability to pay anything.
The person who pisses me off is the guy who can find the money for payments on a new Harley but “can’t afford insurance” or “don’t want the government stealing *my* money”, has a few drinks, and ends up in the ICU with extensive neurological damage - on *our* dime.
I don’t like an insurance mandate, but unless and until we start doing “wallet biopsies” to check for insurance, and tossing the voluntarily uninsured back out on the curb to bleed out (which ain’t gonna’ happen), IMO a mandate is fairer than sticking the rest of us with the entire bill.