Further
Guy
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I think that's an honorable perspective and in general in life I ascribe to the same. However I think that healthcare is different. It's not just one person paying for you or visa versa, it's such a substantial piece of the pie and so astronomical in some cases that it becomes an impossibility. When my niece passed, her bills if she didn't have stellar insurance would have been over 2 million. It's bills like that which cause people in one group or another to require assistance. A friend of mine had cancer and his monthly medications for the rest of his life have just been reduced to $15,000. In order to get the government to pay for those meds he has to work as a handyman making a third of what he used to make as a general contractor.I mean Id like my health care paid for too, but not if you are paying for it for me. I want and take PRIDE in being able to fend for myself. Be independent and not at the mercy of those that can provide for me.
Anyways, if there are to be pools for some people to get assistance, that has to come from you, me and society at large. So, given that we don't want to remove all restrictions from insurance companies, allowing them to charge expecting moms, people with pre-existing illnesses or life threatening diseases 10 or 20 times what you pay, perhaps it's unrealistic for you to say you want to pay yours and have others pay theirs.
If we do switch to universal healthcare and actually get rid of insurance companies, we would reduce a gigantic portion of why healthcare costs so much. And if we change the laws so we can actually use the bargaining power of our nation of get medications at cheaper rate then we could remove another large part of the bill. Then there's the issue that healthcare is so much more expensive when dealing with emergencies instead of preventative care. If the system were truly universal, so many of the people don't have healthcare or have shitty healthcare, or who can't afford the copays or medications would now be covered to actually be more proactive with their health and in the long run reduce the bill society has to pay.
It's not like you wouldn't pay for you healthcare since you are a taxpayer. You would pay for yours, I would pay for mine, but we might also be paying for that expecting mom, the elderly, the pre-existing condition person... But, in the end we as a society would pay less and you as an individual would also likely pay less. Of course you might have insurance through your work, but that would simply change. My employer pays almost 11K per employee for our healthcare. That 11K would either go towards taxes to pay for healthcare or it would go towards a larger salary. Most likely it would actually be split.
Anyways, those are my thoughts on this issue.
