Supreme Court Health Care Ruling
You find a nice vacation property to rent year around, but the rent and upkeep are too much for you to manage on your own. Suppose that you bring in more of your friends to help defray the costs. You rent the property and everyone pays a monthly payment for the rental along with some extra for yearly maintenance.
This plan seems pretty good at the first as no one needs to use the property year around and there are plenty of days to go around.
Now suppose that other friends and family want to also use the property but do not have the money or want to help pay for the rental or upkeep fees. Being generous you and your rental friends let them use the property for free.
However, too many friends and family get a free ride and this starts to bother people who pay to make a nice vacation property clean and always ready and available to use.
Eventually you and your rental sharing friends decide that everyone that wants to have the property available and clean for use need to pay at least something monthly into the rental and upkeep fund. So a rule is made to that effect. This seems like common sense!
What does this have to do with healthcare?
The rental property represents health providers (emergency rooms, doctors, hospitals, etc.) You and your rental friends represent people who have health care plans through their work or pay on their own. Your friends and family that ask to use the property represent people who don’t have insurance either because they can’t afford a plan or that don’t want to spend the money even if they have it to spend.
The Supreme Court will soon rule on the legality of requiring everyone to purchase health insurance. This will include people who will get subsidized insurance and those (which include a lot of healthy young people who don’t feel they need insurance but still get treated under our present system when they get sick) who choose not to purchase insurance.
The Supreme Court will most probably rule based on ideological feelings and not on clear and unbiased thinking.
My hope is by presenting the issue first without the “ideological baggage” of “health care” attached, it will make it easier to understand the issues involved and to come to an unbiased decision.
What do you think?
Are you upset that the "government" forces you to wear a seat belt, have a permit for new wiring installed in you home, or a license to practice medicine?