Plush
Member 11574
Level 19.87
Aug 2006
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Jul 3, 2009, 03:18 AM
Local time: Jul 3, 2009, 03:18 AM
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#1 of 44
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As noted in the article you quoted, the reasoning is similar, although not quite identical idea as forcing insurance on motorists. In a system where public tax dollars are being used to set up and help cover health care, those who don't want to get it, but then get sick or hurt and use emergency facilities are a drain on the system as a whole. Unlike the motorist case, there's not a direct person to person tradeoff, where their lack of insurance primarily affects you or I, but instead that lack of contribution to the pool is spread over everyone.
Health insurance is inherently a scam, as the idea of all insurance is making a profit based upon the statistical likelihood of events occuring in a large enough group. To consistently make the 20%+ profits that the companies often do, they need to charge you a significant enough premium that the sum of your collective risk and cash outflow, along with profits, doesn't overwhelm your payments. This provides a secondary reason for why the government would fine you, as it helps to ensure that they achieve the highest rate of coverage possible, since larger pools produce more normalized rates of outflow.
Finally, larger pools also allow the group greater leverage when bargaining with service providers and lobby representatives to negotiate prices / rates / benefits. Think Walmart in health care. By fining John Doe, or 1000 like him, and adding them to the pool, they are then theoretically able to negotiate improved benefits which are passed on to the other members.
Jam it back in, in the dark.
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