| > because it is based on the idea that there is an element of chance inherent in who gets sick That statement is true, but health "insurance" covers lots of non-chance things, because it covers lots of things that are not a result of "getting sick". Some examples: * Birth control. * Basic childhood vaccination. * Well-child checkups. * Annual health checkups for adults. * Basic screening tests for adults (mammograms, colon cancer
screens, that sort of thing). All these things should be provided, imo; insurance is the wrong vehicle for providing them. Politically, I _think_ (hope?) there would be a lot more support for "provide all children with basic health checkups" than there is for the ACA. Of course there would be less support for the "birth control" item, which is why people like to bundle these all together, and with things like emergency medicine and end-of-life medicine. Which are _also_ quite different in terms of their risk profiles, tradeoffs, and elements of chance. It also covers some things that in an ideal world would not be chance but are in practie (e.g. routine births with no complications; they are more chance than they should be because as a society we suck at birth control, on both the organizational and personal level). I really wish we separated our "health care" a bit more along some of these axes, because I suspect that the "right" answer is to have single-payer for some aspects of it, an insurance scheme (private or public or both) for other aspects, and "you're on your own" for still others, with expensive and invasive end-of-life interventions heading this last list. |