The basic premise that everyone should be protected in case of serious illness or injury with appropriate insurance is not an unsavory idea. But the concept of an individual mandate does nothing. Not only does it not help with that problem of encouraging everyone to carry coverage, it confuses the entire idea of what “health insurance” is or is supposed to be — so much that it affirmatively discourages or reduces the likelihood that people will have insurance. I propose that the concept of health insurance should only really be related to major medical situations, like other true “insurances”.
The individual mandate is both unconstitutional and ineffective because it leads to a poor allocation of resources. In order to understand why, it requires an understanding between the difference of real health “insurance” and what currently counts as health insurance (a broad medical coverage plan).
Insurance, by definition, is a payment of a premium to cover the very unlikely event that would result in high economic consequences. Therefore, it has the effect of relatively low premiums to protect against that economic possibility.
In contrast, what counts as medical insurance in this country is a small portion of real insurance, but is largely pre-paid medical care: you pay your monthly premium which you get back every time you go to the doctor because you’ve already contributed x so many dollars a month which covers the doctors’ fees (minus a “co-pay” or “deductible”). It’s not an efficient practice, however, nor a cost-effective one. It gives the false impression that going to the doctor is cheap, when in reality, you’ve already paid in advance for doctor visits – that you may or may not have.
This is in contrast to other types of true insurance. I submit it is necessary to remodel the health insurance system after other insurance sectors – such as life, fire, or home insurance. For instance, it is both accepted and reasonable that you will pay more for life insurance at the age of sixty than at twenty-five. The reason for this practice is the understanding that the risk is higher.
Likewise, people buy fire insurance because the economic loss is from a fire is extraordinarily great and the cost for coverage is relatively low. But even with fire insurance, you pay more if you home is made of wood and not brick, and if you live farther from a fire station than closer — that is the matter of risk.
Everyone should have routine doctor visits. If everyone paid for those out-of-pocket, it would be more economically viable, because one would only be paying for what he needed – and would probably result in more healthy citizens who have an economic incentive to take better care of themselves. Instead, the government intentionally combines and obfuscates the meaning and definition of insurance to include medical coverage or routine costs. The only people who truly need that are the same people who can’t afford anything — and should be treated like those who can’t afford routine food.
You don’t need insurance to go to a doctor. That is welfare. For the average person who pays 15-20K a year of medical coverage, a very large percentage of the cost is not insurance – it’s the prepaid care for a larger pool of people. Therefore, individuals are really overpaying when it is set up this way because the real insurance part is intentionally combined with health care so you can hide the cost of those with higher risks, i.e the cost is buried within premiums.
The term “individual mandate” is intentionally confusing. The individual mandate — as the administration would describe it — is a requirement that everyone buy their own health insurance. The basic concept of everyone having their own health insurance is not, in and of itself, terrible — if health insurance were actually insurance in the same way life or fire insurance are. Obama Care, however, is not and therefore the individual mandate is not a mandate to buy health insurance as we’ve been told — it’s a mandate for universal and pre-paid medical care.
Since people of different ages, medical conditions, pre-existing situations, etc have different anticipated costs, the purpose of an individual mandate has nothing to do with getting people to buy their own insurance. It is the forcing of individuals to buy into a system that makes people pay for medical treatments that are not theirs, support welfare, and overpay for services in order to create a coverage that is similar for all person. That is legal plunder and anti free-market. The health care industry would best serve our citizens if Obama Care and the individual mandate was rescinded and if it restructured health insurance as a ‘true insurance’.