The costs of NOT having universal health care

By | July 16, 2007

The following is an article I posted to the co.general newsgroup on Usenet, in response to a couple of posters complaining that providing universal health care would unfairly force people who didn’t want to to pay for health care for those who can’t afford it:

Try to follow the bouncing ball here: A poor person has a heart attack and is taken to an emergency room. He gets treatment, but can’t pay. The hospital loses money, and to recoup that it raises its rates. Insurance companies have to pay more money to the hospital, so they raise their premiums for members.

Now theoretically, people who can’t afford medical care only go to the emergency room, and theoretically only when they are having major medical problems. So theoretically, the costs that they are passing on are quite large.

Instead of doing this, if we had a health care system that would provide options for those who can’t afford private insurance, they could get treatment and preventive care that would keep them from having to go to the ER. The total cost would be less than what we are seeing now.

You seem to believe that society in general isn’t already footing the costs for providing health care to those who can’t afford it. We are. If you have health insurance, just look at how much your premiums, copays, and out-of-pocket expenses have gone up over the last decade.