Unless you have enough liquid cash to self-insure against high medical costs, then you're just hating the fact that you can't freeload on the rest of us who pay for insurance.
* he were free to actually purchase catastrophic health care coverage instead of the bureaucratic "minimum" politically-acceptable coverage
* he was free to pay for said insurance at a rate approximating his actual risk, i.e. he's actually buying insurance, not something that's insurance plus a government-mandated wealth-transfer mechanism from the young and healthy to the elderly and infirm
But even so, who's to say that people shouldn't be allowed to take risks with their own life and limb? Meh.
That would be fair if he signed a waiver that stated he denied any care if they drop him off in the emergency room. If he's in an accident and unconscious, they are going to take him to the hospital where he'll be treating insurance or not. Without insurance that cost will more likely than not just be spread around.
Many young people think it isn't a big deal, they'll just pay if something happens. Except when it does and now they owe over 100k in bills. Oh, and at the same time they are sick or injured. Now they can't pay, so everyone else does.
Just because _you_ can or can't do something doesn't mean that on aggregate people can or can't. Society must use the situation as a whole. On the whole, many people can't pay and the costs have increased for everyone else.
What do you think insurance is? Everyone pays, only some people actually use it. If you get hit by a bus the day after you get insurance and need $2 million in surgery and therapy, the insurance company pays for that. And now, thanks to Obamacare, they can't just drop you.
And others have addressed the part about risking your own life. In theory, yes, that's fine, except hospitals are legally required to treat everyone regardless of insurance. So the rest of us are paying for it one way or another. This just forces the freeloaders to pay up.
Oh yeah, and it also keeps people from being dumb about not paying for insurance when most of the time it's a good idea, financially.
We know that driving a car is risky and we could crash, and it could cost us lots of money, but on average the risk is acceptable. Instead of casting our financial fortunes to the fates like that, we pay the average risk (actuaries ho) and a few percent to make it worth the insurers' time, and we have restructured our risk exposure: we are guaranteed a certain financial impact, but it's limited, instead of being unlimited.
BUT IF YOU'RE A CRAZY MANIAC driving your new BMW down the freeway at 120mph as a matter of routine and racking up speeding tickets left and right, you end up paying more, because your behavior is risky. If you're a super-safe driver with a cheap car, you end up paying less; you don't subsidize the maniac's premiums -- not insofar as the insurance company can help it, anyway.
Contrast with Obamacare, where young healthy people end up paying more, in order to subsidize the elderly and others at risk of health conditions. That's the wealth transfer. You can also recognize it because without governmental regulation to that effect, it wouldn't be happening.
I'm in total agreement that standard, "old" services like a physical or strep test or penicillin should be paid out of pocket and subject to market forces, just like food and clothing are (two other "life-critical" industries).
But it's a very big step from there to not needing health insurance at all. If you get hit by a car doing 30mph and survive, there is no getting around the fact that your treatment is going to be very expensive. IMO that exactly what insurance should be for.
- Typical procedures used for common infections, broken bones, etc. don't require anything much that wasn't around 50 years ago.
- You might say: CT scanners, MRIs, etc, but the reason these are expensive is market structure (i.e. someone will pay for it...), not a fundamental engineering reason - i.e. the MRI isn't required to be made form gold.
Also note that this is one of the few (only?) industries where the same device w/ same features increases in price over time - because of monopolistic shit from patents, FDA barriers, etc.
Society as such is the one offering medical care to people who can't pay. You don't get then to blame the individuals who can't pay.
He cannot obtain catastrophic coverage (the only medical coverage that makes sense), thanks to the new rules.
He cannot pay a fair prize for that insurance, as he is forced to subsidize the old people who should have saved up when they were young and healthy.