My understanding is that they will sell you a plan at some price but they a prohibited from selling a plan at a price high enough to cover their costs and that price won’t be much different from you paying out of pocket.

Since all conditions include some randomness, if you remain uninsured, you bear the volatility of spending on your condition. “Insuring” yourself merely reduces the volatility, I think.

Though I see this rather as not a failure to insure, but rather a failure of welfare, because it is not insuring against a risk, if the event has already occured. But boiled down this is the major criticism of your opponents.

Great point. Among the many misconceptions out their is that health care costs are high because of cost shifting from the uninsured. The only estimates I’ve seen are that the uninsured results in less than 2% of health care expenditures.

The fact is that most cost shifting is from the INSURED–mostly the government insured.

Which is why if the government covered everybody, even those currently covered by the government would see a decrease in the quality of their care–there would be no private system to cost-shift from.

If you go shopping, I think you’ll find that nobody will sell you a 3 mm thick 100 inch 240 kHz wireless HDMI OLED TV at any price either.

So I still don’t see your point.

It is impossible for any market to ever provide for sale every product or service imaginable to man. However, no system provides a greater array of choices at lower costs than the profit-driven free market.

If you’re in the LA area we should get together to discuss it, I’m sure you could help me understand economics better. And it would do you some good to get out from behind a computer screen and learn how to interact with people.

There are no people in the U.S. that starve for lack of food. Glide Memorial church, among many other charitable organizations takes a great hand in that.

OTH, in countries where the government is responsible for supplying food, people often starve because the food isn’t there.

Do you know the story of the early American colony that tried to practice communism in the production and distribution of food?

If you can remind us of the colony name, Don, I’m sure the story will be of interest.

What is it that is different about those two markets, and why is that relevant? This shouldn’t be hard. Just be a little introspective and ask yourself that question. Then tell me.

Health reform deals with insurance – not care.

Be a little more specific. You can do it. Actually make your point.

It’s difficult to assess a person’s medical need just sitting in the emergency room watching people come in and out. It’s also difficult to assess what exactly they’re doing there. Sometimes it’s easier to quickly process a returning patient or equipment for their specific injury has freed up or any number of other things.

When I lived in NYC and had insurance, I sprained my ankle running. I knew exactly what it was and how to treat it, but I needed crutches to get to work. The medical supply informed me that I must go to the emergency room to obtain said crutches. Why must I suck some ER doctor’s time to get two sticks to lean on? I will never know.

When I cut off my fingertip in a kitchen accident (it’s fine now), the ER took me right away and asked if I had insurance only as I was checking out.

The story I told you is real – it happened to my cousin – and she sat around for hours before they finally tested her. She had insurance.

I’m assuming your ex-girlfriend wasn’t bleeding to death as she waited.

I tried the strike feature on an earlier thread, right after the change-of-venue.

I guess that that particular HTML code isn’t recognized on this server, which is a pity. It’s a wonderful tool for illustrating the doublespeak that Statists are so fond of.

Now, while sitting there I observed when people came in and how long it took to get waited on. Some people came in and got waited on in relatively short order while others waited and waited.

Now I never asked but I wondered if that wasn’t based on if someone had insurance or not. But that’s just speculation.

I certainly didn’t observe any evidence that it was in any way based on a person being in more need of immediate care.

Supporting that, not too long ago a co-worker, who has insurance, paid a visit to the emergency room and he mentioned that he got in right away with almost no wait.

My girlfriend and I waited for hours every time we were there.