Opinion: The best way to convince healthy people to get insurance is not ‘because it’s in your financial interest’
Healthy people should get medical insurance, but not necessarily because it’s in their financial interest.
’Tis the season — open enrollment season, that is. Since before the Nov. 1 start to the annual open enrollment period, the advertising engines for state health insurance marketplaces, and the federal exchange, healthcare.gov, have been revving up. The nation’s uninsurance rate is down to 7.7% — the lowest it has ever been. While the celebrations of this success are merited, more than 25 million Americans are still uninsured.
The woes of the uninsured are well-documented. They are three times as likely to go without needed care due to cost and are more likely to suffer from the weight of high rates of medical debt. Mary Lou Retton, the gold-medal winning Olympic gymnast recently released from the hospital after fighting for her life in the ICU, doesn’t have health insurance. Her family had to crowdfund to raise money to pay for her care. But unlike Mary Lou Retton, most are not able to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars from admiring fans when illness strikes.
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