Quote Originally Posted by Husar View Post
Yes, the entire healthcare industry profits from this and so do you. Insurance makes more treatments available to everyone, which may otherwise not exist since the people having them mostly can't pay for their development. And then it also ensure that doctors get plenty of experience. And it makes everyone safer by providing e.g. vaccination to every citizen instead of just those who can afford it or wouldn't rather spend the money on a new phone.
And then there is mental care, would be weird to ask patients to pay for it themselves or just let them run around, potentially with guns. Especially if they're so affected that they can't possibly work to earn the money for treatment.
Plus you get a lot of indirect benefits by keeping people alive who may have a disability in one area but really shine in another, see Stephen Hawking.
And then of course there is basic human decency, the idea to not just do things because YOU benefit from them, a demand often made by conservatives in general, see also below. Christian values also demand not to think only of yourself.



Yes, health is like a lottery with compulsory participation and not having insurance is like asking to only have the winners pay for the lottery tickets. Republicans like to talk about how society has lost its morals and yet complain about sharing the burden of the unfortunate. The whole chrity model is just bogus because if you want to help everyone and not cherry-pick people (similar to death panels?), you have the same overall cost. Except woth charity even more people wouldn't pay, so the moral people have to pay an even higher price for the same result. Insurance makes immoral people pay a fair share as well.
Consider that even financial markets, the epitome of capitalism, use insurance shemes to guard against catastrophes. Not always successfully, but even the most die-hard capitalists us the idea for themselves.
Not sure I agree with your second paragraph in its entirety, but I am far more a fan of insurance than of a government health service. And you know from previous posts that I am well aware that the current US system is, in some ways, the worst of both archetypal forms, despite some cutting edge capabilities that are amazing (though generally very costly).