US: Should medical insurance be completely free?

Shu

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This has been a big debate for decades. The ones it does matter for are those that have chronic sickness or disease or injuries. The others basically think if the Government gives us free medical insurance that we will have to pay a big tax.

What are you opinions?
 
I do want to find a middle ground. But I firmly believe that completely government run healthcare isn't sustainable in the long term without serious sacrifices to freedom. But more importantly, our government has proven they're corrupt and inept regardless of who is in charge, and I'm not really comfortable trusting them with that much power.

Though, honestly insurance shouldn't exist in the first place. The major reason we even have these issues, whether with housing, transportation, or health, is because we no longer pay for things ourselves. With a middleman picking up the slack, companies don't have to compete directly with each other's prices, nor make things affordable to their customer. Insurance eats the excess cost. So these companies continue to push, raising prices. The issues this causes are unfathomably large. People without insurance can't afford anything. The costs of things still trickle down into the prices of insurance, as well as what things they'll cover. And on top of that, the entire business model is unsustainable to the point that insurance loves to find any way to get out of paying for stuff. Think about that... the one thing you pay into the service for, is the one thing they frantically try to avoid doing when it's required of them. Is that not a broken system?

Not having insurance exist on such a grand scale would force prices to drop dramatically. You'd no longer find 2000%+ markups on products, because their only way to make money... the customers, wouldn't be able to afford it. The only major downside is that this arguably will slow down medical advancement. If a medication is currently too expensive to produce and to sell at an affordable price, it'll struggle to gain enough cost reduction to gain traction. Buuuut, I think this is largely a false problem, because it implies that these companies are using the majority of their ill gotten gains for research and price reduction right now. In fact, we know they usually use it to pay their executives more. Not to mention, in this day and age, I'm sure people would be more than willing to donate to charity funds that go toward researching new treatments, and ways to lower the costs of them.
 
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So what are the facts? Insurance isn't free. Insurance providers are businesses. People have the option to purchase insurance, but are not required.

So should it be free? No, plain and simple. Businesses are in business to make money, unless they're willing to be non-profit and put the excess they make into something else, which for insurance wouldn't apply. Think of insurance as sort of a "rainy day fund" that you pay into in the event that you do need the payout from it eventually. Our parents would tell us that we need insurance because you never know when we may get injured and it will save us a lot of money from the medical bills. You may pay for insurance for 10 years and never need to use it. That money never comes back to you if you never use it. But eventually you get older, need procedures done or even possibly get injured and now you save a ton of money and the money you pay in insurance, all of a sudden, is "profitable" from your perspective and the insurance company takes the hit. Theoretically this money paid to insurance and money saved across the time you have it will even out. You sort of exhaust that "rainy day fund" that you've been paying into for so many years. Obviously, for some it ways more heavily in favor for the insurance side, and some for the money paid on bills side.

By making it free, someone has to foot the bill to fill the "rainy day fund", making it not free at all. I love you like a brother Tyler, but I shouldn't be paying to add to your fund. That's up to you. This is why our "socialized medicine" is something I have a big problem with. Why should I pay for Joe Blow's insurance while he chooses to sit on his ass? We just rid of the individual mandate, which required people to get insurance, even if very basic, otherwise they got hit with a hefty tax. If you're a healthy, 22 year old person who doesn't see a need to pay for insurance because you're confident that you'll never have medical bills, then why should you be forced to get it? Because you can't draw blood from a rock. Someone who has no income, can't pay for it. So basically the person who makes an income provides it for them. I sympathize with those who are on hard times and can't get insurance, but that shouldn't be a problem for everyone else. I wouldn't want someone else paying for me, no matter what kind of hard times I've landed on. It's up to me to get back on my feet and get these luxuries myself.

Free insurance is a nice idea, but not a realistic one. It's not free. Someone is paying for it. The insurance company themselves are a business and need to make a profit to exist, so they can't foot the bill (even though they theoretically foot the bill if you pay more than in the medical bills than pay to buy the insurance). So that means the people that have money in the "rainy day fund" are footing the bill. Me paying for you, basically, and that's wrong.
 
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