It Is a User Fee

It is not a bird, plane, penalty or tax, but a user fee -- to be collected from those who seek to rely on the health care system but would rather avoid paying for it, the "free riders." The whole idea of insurance of any kind, as even a diehard capitalist will agree, is to throw some money into a communal piggy bank to cover the costs of those who will eventually need it. Some may end up taking out of the "bank" less than others, some a great deal, but because health care costs can be enormous, it is rational to purchase insurance at a reasonable fee and, as they say, share (or 'pool') the risk.

Most Americans already contribute to the health care insurance pool, either by purchasing insurance themselves or by getting it from their employers. Others are covered by Medicare or by Medicaid, soon to be expanded under the new law. The roughly one percent who are left, and hence are to be charged a user fee if they do not get insurance, must be reminded that unlike most other insurances -- for cars, fire, earthquakes and such -- which one can reasonably hope to never need, sooner or later, we all will need health care.

Read the rest at the Huffington Post.

Comments

[Bronx Knight]

You are right --- the whole debate about what to call the health insurance mandate (or why we should pay it) was silly.

Even as reformed by ObamaCare, however, I would argue that the current health care system breeds inefficiency. Insurance is typically something a group of people pay to create a pool of assets to hedge against an unlikely but potentially catastrophic loss. Health care, per se, is not really a good subject for "insurance." Certainly, all of us face the likelihood of catastropic illness at some point. But the vast majority of our doctor's visits during our lives are for preventive care or mundane, non-catastrophic illnesses. It would make more sense to eliminate the insurance company middlemen and go to a single-payer system.