Point two would be a hell of an incentive to get insurance, by the by. Beats the hell out of some candy-ass tax penalty. "Young invincible bet wrong, got caught in some freak skateboarding accident? Sucks to be you. You an organ donor by any chance?"
> Point two would be a hell of an incentive to get insurance, by the by. Beats the hell out of some candy-ass tax penalty. "Young invincible bet wrong, got caught in some freak skateboarding accident? Sucks to be you. You an organ donor by any chance?"
It wasn't before, so it probably wouldn't serve as one in the future. The issue is that people aren't very good at estimating risk.
I'm young, healthy, and no one in my family has been in a serious car accident/gotten cancer/had a heart attack in the last 15 years. Obviously that happening is a low risk compared to the financial penalty of maintaining insurance today, so why should I worry? Besides, I'm sure I can get some kind of plan from an insurance company if something bad does happen[1]
[1] I'll be sure to look into the feasibility of this statement as soon as I finish all the other important things on my todo list...
Oh yeah, I don't mean it'd work, I think healthcare neatly falls in the category of collective action problems that are poor fits for the capitalistic profit motive. A lot of people would suffer and die unnecessarily. And in a democracy, enough people would be incentivized to vote for exception after exception to destroy any semblance of market competition. Old people are very very good at two things: getting sick and voting. The pathological dysfunction of American healthcare is pretty much inevitable if you try to stuff for-profit healthcare into a democracy.
I'm really not a socialist, I promise. I just don't see how you'd do it any other better, and it's pretty clear to me that the results are definitively in for our free market experiment.
It's funny how we all pretty much agree the govt should be in charge of stuff like roads, schools, military, police, fire dept, courts, quite a long list of stuff, but adding anything to that is marketed as creeping socialism.
In that case, why would the person choose to do skateboarding? Also, does the individual has any family / friend / church support? If you have no family, no friend, not involved in any community, why do you risk yourself for fun? Because "the society" have to pay for your stupidity?
