[Dan.Linehan]

You know things have gotten pretty bad when moving out of the US seems like the best option. I can't even argue, it seems like America has become so... I don't even know what we've become lately? Complicit mostly. We're digging ourselves some holes lately.

I do have health insurance right now, just because its free at work; I pay $0 to maintain it, so I have it, but in general I could care less if I was covered or not.

Let's say I didn't have any insurance and I got in a bad car wreck. At the risk of sounding irresponsible, I'd get fixed up by the hospital either way, right? Insurance coverage would be about the last thing I was worried about. If I had to file bankruptcy or whatever afterwards because of medical bills, so be it.. I don't see how that affects me all that much.

If someone has insurance their medical bills are covered after an accident because they're paid for by the people who pay into the insurance system. If they don't have it, the hospital has to eat all the bills they've accrued. Then the hospital has to raise rates by a couple cents for everyone else. That, in turn, ends up billing the insurance companies more anyway, so the bills still get paid for by the people who pay into the insurance system. I don't really see the difference between the two scenarios, at the end of the day the people paying into the system pay for everyone regardless.

I can't say that I feel any kind of ethical obligation to maintain insurance just because our society isn't bright enough to universalize coverage. That's our society's fault, not mine. And paying into a broken system perpetuates its problems rather than solving anything.

For example, if we didn't have anyone paying into the insurance system it would simply collapse, causing immediate and drastic reforms to take place, but instead it keeps going this way because people keep feeding into it. So why should I feed into it too, doesn't that make me just as complicit as anyone else? Why should I pay into a system that I fundamentally disagree with?

I know people seem more responsible when they are covered by insurance, but I really question the validity of that perception. I just can't see any greater good in contributing to our system the way it currently runs; supporting it validates the idea that health care coverage is something that should be paid for only by people who can afford it, rather than recognizing it as a basic societal right for every citizen.

This is mostly just my instincts and gut talking, as well as a lack of having any better answers. I'd really like to hear what everyone else thinks. The situation is so screwed up that I don't know what to do about it beyond completely removing myself from it.