Health insurance’s benefit is not “mostly or exclusively financial.”
Nor, for most people, is the first purpose of insurance economic
protection.
Rather, health insurance, Medicare and Medicaid’s primary benefit is to
spread the cost and therefore share the benefits of health care for
people who either cannot afford it or will not buy it until it is too
late. It helps keep our social network functional.
Health insurance enables us to obtain, without any economic
disincentives, basic health care, including vaccinations, childbirth,
children’s checkups and other routine health care. With insurance, we
can all afford and therefore benefit from basic health benefits.
Medicaid is not “deeply dysfunctional.” It, like Medicare, actually
provides less expensive health care and to a less healthy part of our
population than private health insurance.
BARBARA W. GOLD
STEPHEN F. GOLD
Philadelphia, May 6, 2013
STEPHEN F. GOLD
Philadelphia, May 6, 2013
The writers are a pediatrician and a disability rights lawyer, respectively.
To the Editor:
Ross Douthat presents an intriguing idea to replace Obamacare’s
guarantee of full coverage with a plan limited to catastrophic expenses.
But he has his politics reversed.
Liberals have offered numerous proposals for similar coverage
flexibility, only to be met with cries of “death panels” and
“rationing.” When Mr. Douthat assumes that conservatives are natural
allies for his idea, he is looking for support in the wrong place.
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