No, You Don't Deserve to Keep Your Insurance Plan

Jonathan Chait explains the moral calculus of ObamaCare
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 1, 2013 1:02 PM CDT
No, You Don't Deserve to Keep Your Insurance Plan
Linda Norman, right, and Joanna Galt, both from Florida, hold their banners during a "Exempt America from Obamacare" rally on the West Lawn of the Capitol, Sept. 10, 2013.   (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

OK, yes, Barack Obama lied, and that's provoked some "justifiable scrutiny," Jonathan Chait at New York allows. But the people losing their health insurance plans aren't getting a raw deal, he argues. For one thing, many are blissfully unaware that their old, seemingly affordable plans contained hidden costs and limitations that would have left them high and dry in an emergency. "The fine print is a game of wits between insurer and customer that the insurer always wins."

Even so, some healthy people will see their premiums rise. But in exchange, they get the knowledge that they'll have coverage if they ever get sick. "You might even call such a guarantee 'insurance.'" Some still complain that it's morally wrong to force them to buy that bargain. "But they can't quite face up to the full implications of their complaint." It's a "mathematical truism" that giving the sick care they can't afford means charging the healthy more. If you believe the healthy deserve to keep their cheap rates, "you must also believe the sick must be denied medical care." Read his full column here. (More health care reform stories.)

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