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Originally Posted by smith12
So we pay for our health care through taxes which means we spread the cost of health care throughout the country right?
Does anyone else have a problem with the fact that we do this? I mean, I live a very healthy lifestyle, I stay fit, don't smoke and workout all the time. I rarely have to go to the hospital and when I do it's usually a sports related injury. Now why should I have to pay for someone's cancer due to smoking? Why should I pay for some overweight guys cardiac arrest b/c they CHOSE to not live a healthy life style.
In the States, I wouldn't be flipping the bill for people that choose to live like that.
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You are describing perfectly why our system, the single payer system, is cheaper.
It boils down to a term called 'adverse selection.' What that means is that people who are more likely to need insurance will seek it out making the costs of providing insurance much higher. For example, a healthy person like yourself may find little need in buying health care, so you select out of buying it while an overweight smoker recognizes that it's probably a good idea to buy healthcare because they will most likely need it.
The effect is that the costly-to-insure people self-select into a pool that makes paying for all the health care much more expensive.
In a single-payer system, everyone must join health insurance. This ensures that the people who don't need it and will use it less pay to be in and lower total per-user costs. It doesn't necessarily over-burden the healthy because they still will need health insurance for unforeseen issues etc.