Obamacare

[footfootfoot]

As I see the insurance industry there are a number of parallels between it and casino gambling. Essentially, insurance companies are betting you will be healthy and you are betting you will get sick. With actuarial tables insurance companies can predict with exceptional accuracy the likelihood of anyone making a claim and what that claim will cost them. That is one of the reasons that they want to be able to cherry pick their policy holders. Just as a casino will bar card counters and people with "photographic memories" an other people who win too often, insurance companies prefer healthy people over sick or sickness prone people. The house doesn't like to pay out.

The only way it works is when there is a preponderance of losers gambling against the house. Healthy people unlikely to get sick, betting that they will get sick, and unskilled gamblers betting that they will win.

Obamacare is essentially compelling the casinos to allow big winners, card counters, and other drains against the house to continue to gamble, while also compelling non gamblers to also bet against the house.

So the insurance companies have to take the sick people, but they are promised healthy, non-claim making people to offset their costs.

Frankly, I don't see where the government gets off compelling you to have health insurance. Auto insurance is optional in that if you don't want to have auto insurance you don't have to own a car.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by footfootfoot

Frankly, I don't see where the government gets off compelling you to have health insurance.

They don't compel you; they incentivize you, with subsidies and penalties; much more lenient than the auto insurance requirement. Classicman has been considering opting out.

Auto insurance is optional in that if you don't want to have auto insurance you don't have to own a car.

The reasoning for mandatory auto insurance and health insurance is identical, but there's no way to opt out of potentially needing medical care. How would that work? Some sort of "do not treat" tattoo if you're brought into the ER? Like a DNR but for everything?

[footfootfoot]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

They don't compel you; they incentivize you, with subsidies and penalties; much more lenient than the auto insurance requirement. Classicman has been considering opting out.The reasoning for mandatory auto insurance and health insurance is identical, but there's no way to opt out of potentially needing medical care. How would that work? Some sort of "do not treat" tattoo if you're brought into the ER? Like a DNR but for everything?

Some states don't have mandatory auto insurance. You don't opt out of potentially needing medical care, you are self insured.