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Comment by jtuente | Hacker News Reader

As a healthy, single, white male who hasn't had a threatening reason to visit a doctor, This. I probably wouldn't have health insurance right now if it weren't for the Affordable Care Act (even though my employer pays most of it). Sure that could bite me in the ass if something were to happen to me, but I'm comfortable with that risk and have family to help me out. There's no good reason for me to "outsource" my healthcare options.

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> Sure that could bite me in the ass if something were to happen to me, but I'm comfortable with that risk

Has it ever occurred to you don't have much control over that risk, and that you are a human being that like every other can become sick for no reason at all?

> and have family to help me out

Has it ever occurred to you that many people in the United States do not have family to help them out?

Has it ever occurred to you that you have a ton of control over your general health and can protect yourself from physical injury extremely well?

Has it ever occurred to you that many people in the United State don't have legs?

I am in my early twenties. I exercise regularly, I don't drink to excess, I don't smoke, I eat well, and I don't do any dangerous activities. That means I probably won't break my leg or die of obesity-related conditions.

However, it damn well could be that I could get a disease or condition that no one can prevent. No one has any business pretending otherwise.

That's ok because the emergency room has to treat you if you don't have insurance but don't mention single payer or those same people will flip out. Even though those costs are being passed on to the insured int he current setup.

Uncompensated care in the US for 2013 was $85 billion (http://kff.org/uninsured/report/uncompensated-care-for-the-u...). Which may seem like a lot, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to the total health care spending of $3.8 trillion (http://www.forbes.com/sites/danmunro/2014/02/02/annual-u-s-h...). The alleged problem of people deliberately not buying health insurance and then freeloading when they get sent to the emergency room just isn't a significant factor. But the ACA cleverly uses that as a pretense to force young and healthy people to pay far more than the fair market value for insurance policies, as a way to disguise subsidies to others.

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