This isn’t even really a workable policy, because the people at the ER aren’t guaranteed to have a good way of determining if somebody has means to pay.
EMS, for example, will grab a seriously-injured person at the scene of an accident, but they don’t hang around waiting for identification if it’s not immediately apparent. Treatment starts before the hospital even has a name, much less an insurance card. Somebody with no insurance may have perfectly adequate private means of paying, but the ER nurses aren’t going to run a credit check to find out before starting CPR.
Conversely, somebody may have an apparently-valid insurance card, but then the hospital’s claims are denied because premiums weren’t paid, employment has ended, or some other reason.
In the U.K. we pay a compulsory percentage of earnings towards health care and a state pension on retirement, this means that we have full health care through out our life time and money to live on when retired, would this work in America or would your different state laws prevent it
We have Social Security, which works similarly to National Insurance. We could have something like the NHS if the federal government chose to enact it, but that seems unlikely in the short term. What’s more likely to happen is that states will decide to adopt individual universal coverage schemes one by one.
Perhaps. But the “red tape” costs associated with good-faith reporting are much less than costs to cope with the profit-motivated obstructions present in the U.S. system. Doctors report wasting many man-hours dealing with insurers. Patients also lose much time although, since unpaid, the waste of citizens’ time isn’t included in healthcare cost figures.
Problem is say Joe Blow opts out, doesn’t want to pay for any doctor visits out of pocket, ignores a growth on his arm, gets cancer and shows up on the steps of the hospital. What do you want to happen? Do we say “see ya Joe, nice knowing you”? Or is he helped?
And to extend on this, if Joe Blow dies from untreated cancer, are his survivors eligible for benefits from his fellow taxpayers? How about if Joe seeks treatment, survives, but then goes bankrupt on the bills?
If you are alive, there is a non-trivial chance that somebody is going to have to pay for health care for you. If that somebody is not you, directly or via insurance, then who? If you go without health insurance and lack the means to pay your own bills, you may very well damage the pocketbooks of others.