Are you familiar with Markos Moulitsas and Keith Olbermann?
Are you familiar with Sheila Jackson Lee and Maxine Waters?
The vast majority of the uninsured are US citizens. And many/most of those that aren’t are legal. Cite.
And regarding those who choose to be uninsured, they’re not REFUSING to be uninsured, only making the decision that the high cost doesn’t outweigh the benefits. IMHO, that’s not exactly a ringing endorsement of our current system either when even those that CAN pay feel it’s not worth it.
I doubt they feel it’s not worth it. More than likely they just feel they aren’t gonna need it for the foreseeable future and so they’d rather spend the money on cars, big-screen TV’s, etc. To a significant degree these are the kinds of people who develop pre-existing conditions. Then when they can’t get coverage, they want the government to pay to treat them, or to force the insurance companies that they haven’t been paying up to now to cover them now that they need it.
No cite needed – I already knew it, which is why I didn’t claim otherwise. The groups I listed combine to make up the majority of the uninsured. 40% of the uninsured make over $50K a year; most of them can certainly afford private insurance. Another third of the uninsured qualify for medicaid but do not sign up for it, possibly because they don’t want to pay even the medicare premium; presumably they would also pass at signing up for Obama’s “Public Option.”
Why? Is there some reason everybody MUST be insured even if they don’t want to be, even if they’re a millionaire in great health? For a young person in good health, it can actually be quite a sensible choice to forego insurance if your employer allows you to take the cash instead. As I said, millions of people choose not to sign up for medicare, and its premiums are minimal.
No, absolutely not. But if you get the price low enough sooner or later there WILL be a price where they’ll say, “Sure. That coverage is worth the price” As it is, though, the price of the policies are higher than that. I’m just saying that the fact that some are voluntarily without insurance isn’t necessarily a sign they are being well served by our current system.
Oh believe me. Everyone told me I needed a policy out of college. Premiums ~$5,000, health care costs ~$1,500, amount my policy covered…$0.