The point of insurance is to protect you against unlikely but damaging events. . . .You Do Not Have Health Insurance, from The Baseline Scenario.
If, like most people, your health coverage is through your employer or your spouse’s employer, that is not what you have. At some point in the future, you will get sick and need expensive health care. What are some of the things that could happen between now and then?For all of these reasons, you can’t count on your health insurer being there when you need it. That’s not insurance; that’s employer-subsidized health care for the duration of your employment.
- Your company could drop its health plan. . . .
- You could lose your job. . . .
- You could voluntarily leave your job, for example because you have to move to take care of an elderly relative. . . .
- You could get divorced from the spouse you depend on for health coverage. . . .
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Are You Really Insured?
The way things really are:
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Yes, and the sky is blue, too.
ReplyDelete(BTW, I recently learned that large companies don't actually have health insurance. They use an insurance company to handle the money, but they actually just pay the bills themselves. Huh.)
Of course you don't have your employer health insurance after you quit your job. And you don't have your car insurance if you stop making payments.
The right wants to detach health insurance from the employer.
The left seems to want to destroy private health insurance and make sure everyone (except Congress) has exactly the same crappy health care.
The only people who have decent health coverage are the people who work for companies that have a large enough pool of employees to effectively spread risk.
ReplyDeleteThe right wants to destroy that and drive everyone into the individual insurance market where people get screwed the worst.
The right's only justification for this proposal is a delusional faith in the magic of the markets.
'That’s not insurance; that’s employer-subsidized health care for the duration of your employment.'
ReplyDeleteThe Russians had similar problems after market liberalisation.
As health care was usually arranged through the firms they worked for, they had problems when unemployment became a reality.