Will it Work if Individual Health Insurance Becomes Affordable?
December 2009
With all of the arguing over health care legislation right now, the notion of a legal mandate applied to American's
health insurance plans has been getting a lot of press.
Those who favor mandates argue that the reason why individual health insurance has become so expensive is because too many people don't get coverage until they're sick (if they get it at all). Then, the high costs of their treatments are foisted on to hospitals and insurance companies, who raise costs for everyone else to compensate.
The thinking goes that if getting coverage for any of the different types of health insurance plans out there were legally required, then America's health care would function much like a standard group health insurance plan.
The premiums paid by the healthy would offset the costs of the sick, lowering costs for everyone.
Those who oppose legal mandates do so for a variety of raesons, but the most compelling is that the current costs for
individual health insurance are just too high. If costs aren't controlled, but people are legally required to buy coverage, many people will be uninsured
and fined.
Or, according to those cited at the
Wall Street Journal, they could go to jail.
Facts on:
Health Insurance Plans & Mandates
Did you know...
The premiums paid by the healthy would offset the costs of the sick,lowering costs for everyone?
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The argument posed in the article contends that sending people to jail for failing to purchase individual health insurance isn't going to happen - that those who bring it up are using "scare tactics."
But a good question still remains - how will costs for plans like individual health insurance, which is usually the most costly of the bunch, be controlled? Expecting everyone to take action to protect their health is one thing, but doing so without controlling costs is only going to benefit insurance companies out to make a profit.
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