Reply #41: Hillary's plan is based on two false assumptions

[CTLawGuy]

1. That there are large numbers of "freeloaders" who could afford insurance and could obtain adequate insurance, but just choose not to buy it. This is assumption behind mandates. A mandate is only good in order to force someone to do something you want them to do, that they could do, but simply choose not to do.

Most of the 15 million uninsured are those who can't afford insurance, or those who are uninsurable. Maybe there are a very few who just choose not to buy insurance. People know that if you get treated and have no insurance you get a bill, and if you don't pay the bill you get taken to bankruptcy. Taxpayers foot it once the hospital has cleaned out the patient's assets. There's no such thing as "free" health care. I don't know of anyone who is intentionally using bankruptcy as health insurance.

2. The second assumption is that simply pushing more healthy people into the health insurance market generally will reduce the premiums. This would be true if we had a single payer system. It is much less true when we have many, many insurance pools out there. If I insure 2 healthy people and 7 sick people, 1 extra healthy person joining my competitor's pool doesn't help me (I don't get their premiums), and wouldn't let me reduce my premiums for everyone else.

Furthermore, to comply with the mandate, the healthy would buy the cheapest adequate insurance out there, which is probably not the insurer with 2 healthy people and 7 sick people. It is probably the insurer with 7 healthy people and 2 sick people, or the company that just starts up in order to insure a bunch of healthy people trying to comply with the mandate.