Friday, February 08, 2008

Health Care Microeconomics

Yesterday I looked at some of the macroeconomic reasons why universal health care requires universal payment. Badtux the Snarky Penguin talks about the microeconomics of the health care death spiral:
First is a mandate that health insurers must accept all comers, regardless of how well or how sick they are. Second is that insurers must cover pre-existing conditions. The final mandate in Obama's plan is a mandate that health insurers are not allowed to drop people from their rolls at renewal time.

Okay, so here's a question: with a mandate like these, why would anybody voluntarily sign up for health insurance *before* they got sick?

1 comment:

  1. Well, for the same reason as to arm themselves _before_ they go to war. Nobody comes to a battlefield asking "hum, okay - and where's my weapon now?" The point is, that health and health services are things one can or cannot afford. Needless to say that this per se a wrong attitude towards the issue for health is in some sense life and it's not that hard to come to a conclusion like "who cannot afford living can quit and just die" - well, in fact most cannot afford dying either. There's something wrong.. o_O

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