Why should I be forced to purchase auto insurance but not health insurance??

[kentuck]

If I am in an automobile accident, why is my car more valuable than my body?? And why am I forced to purchase this type of insurance?

Maybe Obamacare should be transferred to the states and when people purchase tags for their cars, then heathcare costs simply added to their total, if they wanted to continue driving? Otherwise, how is it ever going to be mandatory??

[NightWatcher]

1. and those who don't drive???

Ever get deja vu?

[frazzled]

16. But there's nobody who doesn't have a body

Some people don't have a car and thus don't need auto insurance, but every human being has a body (that will ultimately get sick or hurt) and thus everybody should have health insurance.

Got it?

[Blanket Statements]

2. The question is why shouldn't you be forced to buy

Boat and motorcycle insurance when you buy car insurance?

[11 Bravo]

5. Hmmmm, 3 posts hidden in less than a month of membership, no donor star ...

and now this. Enjoy your stay.

[Blanket Statements]

9. And now what?

Had one post hidden because I didnt praise the Dixie chicks, one for calling someone a bigot and one for...hurting someone's feelings by disagreeing with them

[CreekDog]

18. No, you had a post hidden for accusing me of "drinking", not for "not praising" the Dixie Chicks

nice try though. going for a fourth hide?

by the way, i didn't alert that, i didn't even see that you'd post that to me. someone sent me the jury results.

AUTOMATED MESSAGE: Results of your alert
Mail Message
At Fri Dec 20, 2013, 07:27 AM you sent an alert on the following post:

Been drinking?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4203402

REASON FOR ALERT:

This post is disruptive, hurtful, rude, insensitive, over-the-top, or otherwise inappropriate.

YOUR COMMENTS:

Personal attacks like these make DU suck

A randomly-selected Jury of DU members completed their review of this alert at Fri Dec 20, 2013, 07:34 AM, and voted 6-0 to HIDE IT.

Juror #1 voted to HIDE IT and said: Agree with alerter.
Juror #2 voted to HIDE IT and said: No explanation given
Juror #3 voted to HIDE IT and said: No explanation given
Juror #4 voted to HIDE IT and said: Obvious personal attack is obvious
Juror #5 voted to HIDE IT and said: No explanation given
Juror #6 voted to HIDE IT and said: No explanation given

[Blanket Statements]

20. I didn't accuse you of anything

We both know the real reason you got upset.
Now leave me alone and stop trying to bully me

[CreekDog]

28. Don't be coy. Yes, you did.

Blanket Statements


74. Been drinking?

Last edited Fri Dec 20, 2013, 04:17 AM - Edit history (1)

A Jury voted 6-0 to hide this post on Fri Dec 20, 2013, 05:34 AM. Reason: This post is disruptive, hurtful, rude, insensitive, over-the-top, or otherwise inappropriate.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4203402

[Blanket Statements]

29. No, I didn't. Now please leave me alone

[CreekDog]

32. you asked if I've been drinking

you're now a victim of bullying at DU?



right.

[Blanket Statements]

33. I asked a question. I didn't make an accusation. Now leave me alone

And yes, it's clear you're trying to bully me because of my post count

[CreekDog]

38. At issue isn't your low post count. It's the low quality of your posts.

the best you can say about your post is that you didn't accuse me of drinking, you merely, innocently "asked" if I've been drinking.

please. spare us.

[Blanket Statements]

39. Leave me alone

[11 Bravo]

44. You do realize that this an internet message board? Every time you post ...

tens of thousands of people are free to respond to you. Plaintive cries to "leave me alone" might be indicative of an insufficiently thick skin to participate on this board. (And if you really think you have been "bullied" in this thread, there are a couple of forums and groups that you need to avoid like the plague!)

[Blanket Statements]

45. If I cannot respond without the most benign post being alerted on

Then I'm being bullied.

[11 Bravo]

48. No, you really aren't. But if you honestly believe that you have been bullied in this thread ...

then I truly hope that you are able to find a way to get through life.

[Blanket Statements]

49. See...if I were to respond to you in the manner I saw fit

Someone would find it offensive because oft post count..Sooo I am forced to bite my tongue

[11 Bravo]

50. Not so! We welcome those with "oft post count", (whatever that may be). But please ...

don't bite your tongue. I would hate to see you come back and claim that you had been forced to "bully" yourself.

[Blanket Statements]

51. Whatever...

[CreekDog]

30. by the way, it's not "bullying" to point out what you said less than 24 hours ago

we aren't here to coddle you by gathering around you to pat you on the back and pretend you didn't say what you said to make you feel better.

if you think liberals are weak and pushovers, think again.

[Blanket Statements]

31. Leave me alone

[Kelvin Mace]

24. Because the reason for mandating auto liability insurance

and mandating health insurance are completely different.

Apples and oranges.

[Blanket Statements]

26. That's not what I'm talking about

I was referring to the coverage mandates

[Kelvin Mace]

35. The coverage mandate for auto liability insurance

is to require you to maintain a policy to compensate anyone you may harm with your car. As such, it makes no sense to require someone buying auto liability insurance to buy boat or motorcycle insurance. If you do not own those conveyances, you cannot harm people with them.

The health insurance mandate requires everyone to buy health insurance because:

1) By making everyone play, it reduces the cost of insurance for everyone (the bigger the pool, the lower the risk, the lower the premium).

2) If everyone has insurance then society is spared the ruinous cost of paying for the indigent medical care for people who have have inexpensive, treatable conditions, morph into horrifically expensive ones. Catching a skin cancer early costs a few thousand dollars. Catching it after it has spread to other organs costs hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So the coverage mandate purposes are different, thus not comparable.

[Blanket Statements]

36. Okay, bad analogy

[Kelvin Mace]

3. Well, to be accurate

you are forced to carry liability insurance to protect OTHER people from the harm you can do to them with your car. Insurance on yourself and your car is optional.

So, I am afraid your analogy doesn't work.

The reason to mandate health insurance is to reduce the cost of medical care to society as a whole by compelling everyone to pay into the pool.

[Jackpine Radical]

7. So car insurance indemnifies you against damage to a specific, identifiable individual or group

whereas health insurance indemnifies you against damage to society when the rest of us have to pay for your ER visit.

Personally, I think the only solution is for us to have national health CARE, not this haphazard Rube Goldberg mix of plans we now have.

[Kelvin Mace]

12. Not quite as

policies vary. It indemnifies you, if you wish, to the limits of the policy. But you are not required to buy the policy to protect yourself, but to protect other people. If you carry the minimum insurance required by your state, say $300,000, but my injuries cost $500,000, you are still on the hook for the extra, plus any other damages that may arise out of civil litigation.

The purpose of the legal mandate is to protect society from your negligence, not to protect you from financial loss (though the insurance has that secondary effect).

I agree with you that single payer is the best solution. Why we didn't simply open Medicare up to everyone defies logic. It would have been cheaper and easier to set up since the infrastructure was already in place, it would just have been a matter of scaling up to handle the larger patient base.

[Jackpine Radical]

17. Defying logic

is the primary stock in trade of health insurance companies. They hire whole rooms full of people whose only job is to make irrational (but cost-cutting) decisions about care authorizations & payments to providers. They have turned the use of the HOLD button into an art form. It was mostly the increasing unjustifiable demands, and reimbursement cuts, of the insurers that drove me out of clinical practice several years ago.

[Kelvin Mace]

22. No argument

And the I am shocked that people still buy into the lie that "tort reform" would translate into cheaper health insurance for the public and cheaper malpractice insurance for doctors.

It doesn't. Never has and never will.

[Jackpine Radical]

40. "Tort reform" is another license for the Corporate State to abuse the citizens with impunity.

It make it cheaper to poison people, sell defective products, and operate with gross negligence. It essentially reduces the monetary value of human life and wellbeing.

[Kelvin Mace]

41. We are in complete agreemeht on that point

[NoOneMan]

4. Most states give a damn about your car. Its about who your car kills

Liability insurance is about being able to cover the messes you create while using a public roadway. It normally doesn't pay a dime for your own damages

[sabrina 1]

6. You don't have to buy auto insurance unless you own a car. Many people do not own cars, they are not

forced to buy car insurance.

See the difference? I thought this was cleared up way back when Romneycare pushed the Mandate, among Dems anyhow. That was one of their favorite and failed attempts to 'justify' being forced to buy a product from a private corp.
'
Obama explained why he opposed Mandated Insurance very eloquently during the campaign. He told McCain, who supported it of course, (those lazy welfare queens should not make the rest of us pay for their HC etc) that if 'forcing people to buy homes would end homelessness, we would it'. Good analogy from him I thought at that time.

[geek tragedy]

8. actually, it was against Hillary and her supporters like Paul Krugman

that he used that line, and he was attacking her from the right on that.

[sabrina 1]

10. She was adapting the long time Right Wing attempt to force everyone to buy

insurance from Private Corps. Obama took the long time Left position of not forcing people to buy a product they could not afford. He was in favor of the long time Left option, to provide for those who were less fortunate.

Since when is it a Right Wing policy to provide for the least among us? That's news to me.

[cthulu2016]

13. Obama was in favor of pandering gibberish during a primary

Single payer is best.

But if a system is designed to rely on the market (as Obama's always was) and eliminate pre-existing conditions then the mandate is economically mandatory.

What Obama proposed was not any LEFT view that ever existed. It was a version of the Heritage/Massachusetts plan that cut out the part that would make such a plan work.

[sabrina 1]

19. Are you saying he lied? Since there was virtually little difference in the end between the two Dem

candidates, except for a couple of issues, one of them being his opposition to Mandated Insurance, I supported him because of that and about two other issues, another being his stated opposition to 'forming committees' which he described as doing a 'run around Congress'. Of course he immediately changed his mind on that also.

And btw, this country can afford to pay for a totaly National Health Care System, including no one being turned away because of a pre condition, something that NEVER, EVER have been allowed. It is NOT a gift that this outrageous denial of care to those who most need it, has finally been eliminated, it is a disgrace that we are supposed to be grateful for something that was a crime to begin with.

[geek tragedy]

34. that's not what their positions were.

Clinton/Krugman were for mandates plus subsidies so it would be affordable.

Obama was for subsidies without a mandate. Problem was, that the subsidies wouldn't be enough without a mandate, since it would be disproportionately sick and old who signed up, making them.

Krugman is not a rightwinger on health care. From 2007

Imagine this: It’s the summer of 2009, and President Barack Obama is about to unveil his plan for universal health care. But his health policy experts have done the math, and they’ve concluded that the plan really needs to include a requirement that everyone have health insurance — a so-called mandate.


Without a mandate, they find, the plan will fall far short of universal coverage. Worse yet, without a mandate health insurance will be much more expensive than it should be for those who do choose to buy it.

But Mr. Obama knows that if he tries to include a mandate in the plan, he’ll face a barrage of misleading attacks from conservatives who oppose universal health care in any form. And he’ll have trouble responding — because he made the very same misleading attacks on Hillary Clinton and John Edwards during the race for the Democratic nomination.

...

Finally, Mr. Obama is storing up trouble for health reformers by suggesting that there is something nasty about plans that “force every American to buy health care.”

Look, the point of a mandate isn’t to dictate how people should live their lives — it’s to prevent some people from gaming the system. Under the Obama plan, healthy people could choose not to buy insurance, then sign up for it if they developed health problems later. This would lead to higher premiums for everyone else. It would reward the irresponsible, while punishing those who did the right thing and bought insurance while they were healthy.

Here’s an analogy. Suppose someone proposed making the Medicare payroll tax optional: you could choose not to pay the tax during your working years if you didn’t think you’d actually need Medicare when you got older — except that you could change your mind and opt back in if you started to develop health problems.

Can we all agree that this would fatally undermine Medicare’s finances? Yet Mr. Obama is proposing basically the same rules for his allegedly universal health care plan.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/07/opinion/07krugman.html?_r=0

[cthulu2016]

11. Because you are not a car and were not born with a car.

I am a mandate supporter, but the auto insurance analogy goes nowhere, since nobody is required, by the government, to own a car.

[former9thward]

14. Maybe you should be forced to buy life insurance.

When someone dies it can be financially disastrous on the family. Even if by themselves there can be costs society has to pick up. Force everyone to buy life insurance. Any other parts of the insurance industry you want to prop up?

[Glassunion]

15. Don't equate the two.

Auto insurance = Liability is required
Health insurance = Is required

Liability auto insurance is required if you own a car AND drive it on public roads.
Health insurance is required if you reside in the United States and are a living human being.

So if you don't feel that it should be required to have auto insurance, you can either stop driving your car on public roads, or get rid of the car all together. If you don't want health insurance, you can either leave the United States for another country that does not require it, or you can try to hold your breath until you no longer meet the second requirement.

[grahamhgreen]

21. With socialized medicine, medical injury via car accident is covered by health insurance so

your auto liability rates go down.... This is a missing factor in Obamacare.

Anything we are being forced to purchase is cheaper done in bulk, by the govt.

[cherokeeprogressive]

23. I don't know about all states but CA doesn't force people to buy auto insurance.

A motorist only needs to be bonded for the minimum liability amount.

[rrneck]

25. Well, in the case of auto insurance

you're actually insuring yourself against damage to other people and property. If you get sick, you're the only one hurt and it's your problem in a libertarian utopia.

[JVS]

27. You don't have to purchase any coverage for your own car, you have to purchase liability for the...

damage you might do to other people's property.

Your comparison is flawed and thishas been gone over many times.

[Egalitarian Thug]

37. You shouldn't be required to buy either. Auto insurance companies are exactly the same as

health insurance companies in that they are both non-productive, purely extractive parasites that drain a fat slice from everybody's income and provide nothing in return.

Also like health care, the most efficient, lowest cost alternative is something like California's pay at the pump plan that the auto insurance industry blocked with their black card, despite the population's overwhelming vote against them.

[WillowTree]

42. You're not forced to buy insurance to cover damage to your car.......

.......unless you have an open loan, and then it's required by the lender (to cover their interest in the car until it's paid off), not the government. The government (state) only requires you to purchase liability insurance to cover personal injury or property damage that you might inflict on others.

[MisterP]

43. I mean, if a mandate was the solution, we can try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody

to buy a house.

[sabrina 1]

53. That's what Obama said during the campaign, but then instantly changed his mind after we helped him

get to the WH.

[MisterP]

54. *wink*

[Xithras]

47. If you drive your car into a tree, with legally mandated insurance, it won't cover you.

It will, however, compensate the owner of the tree for any damage you did to it.

Additional coverage, to repair damage done to your car either by accident or your own negligence, is not mandated by law and is an optional purchase that many car owners choose to make of their own free will.


The comparison is not valid, and never has been.

[TheKentuckian]

52. You aren't. There isn't a mandate to have an auto. That is voluntarily engaged in commerce.

[Supersedeas]

55. No one is forcing you to drive--driving is a privilege that comes with responsibilities