teedubbya wrote: You wouldn't be forced in, but if you chose not to and got sick you are simply left to pay for it yourself or die if you can not. And we need to be hard core about it. The problem is America is a bunch of softies and we can't or won't do that.
This is the key here that I was trying to emphasize.
Currently, we don't let people die.
Everyone gets the 20" tv, even if they chose not to buy a tv. This changes the economics of how a person makes a buying choice.
I don't care about a person's bankruptcy or death. But the bankruptcy screws up the costs for everyone else in the system, and the death is something the hospitals are unwilling to allow to happen, screwing up the costs for everyone else in the system.
Don't get me started on pre-existing conditions. While I agree that sucks to have one, I really really really don't agree with forcing a company to insure without allowing them to take that risk into account. It'd be like forcing casinos to hit on 19. It takes away a lot of the "risk" for the buyer of insurance. I understand why they had to sell off the healthy to the insurance companies to get them to accept that group. Something else needs to be done with pre-existing conditions (and as our genetic testing gets better, I agree with TW that pre-existing conditions are going to start getting identified prenatally) because to pretend we are working on an "insurance" type of model in that case is just fooling ourselves.