Michelle is just so weird

by shamanic

Yeah, over at Malkin's place again. Hey, I'm there so you don't have to be. Today she contributes this bit of thinking to the debate over public insurance options:

Well, yes, it sucks. But Earth to liberals: That’s how insurance works–if you don’t buy it before you need it, you shouldn’t be shocked if it’s impossible to get after you need it.

Yesterday I encouraged readers to visit Michelle's place and consider the philosophical underpinnings of her position, a desire for a country where you're on your own and there's no safety net to catch you if you lose your job, if you're a child whose parents didn't buy you health insurance before you needed it, or you have some catastrophic health event that costs more than your insurance will cover.

She really couldn't be more clear of her position than in this passage though. Yes Michelle, this is how insurance works, and this is why a lot of Americans have a perfectly good faith opinion that there should be options for those who don't or can't buy insurance and then get hit with a serious medical issue.

Michelle seems to think it's perfectly acceptable that insurance should be "impossible to get" for people who actually need it, and I just damn well disagree. For the basic reasons of human decency, first and foremost, but also because all these uninsured people end up costing our health care system tons of money. Somebody has to pay for those services, and I'm pretty sure that's usually handled by creatively overbilling private insurers for services to make up the difference. Which raises the premiums of all those smart people that Michelle counts herself among who bought it before she or her family needed it.

But really, the cost is an academic exercise. When people are sick, especially when they are life-threateningly sick, they shouldn't have to worry about losing their homes or avalanching their families with bills. They should have access to doctors and medicine and health care. What kind of frigging country are we living in, anyway? This isn't Haiti. This isn't Barbados. This is the United States of America, and for some lunatic reason, we can't even agree that everybody oughta see a doctor from time to time, especially when they're sick, even if they're poor.