The U.S. insurance model doesn’t work (WP)

[jsr]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-lane-the-us-insurance-model-doesnt-work/2014/02/10/0cb7f8f4-9277-11e3-84e1-27626c5ef5fb_story.html

The U.S. insurance model doesn’t work
Charles Lane, Editorial Writer

The left-right battle that erupted over last week’s Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report showing that Obamacare reduces work incentives was, on the surface, yet another argument about the health-care law’s impact on the U.S. economy.

On a deeper level, however, what’s at issue are long-standing American assumptions about government assistance and who deserves it.

In other advanced industrial democracies, especially in Europe, health insurance, pensions and even certain amounts of income support for working-age adults are considered rights, to which everyone is entitled by virtue of their membership in society and their shared vulnerability to life’s vicissitudes.

In the United States, by contrast, there is more emphasis on the duty of the “able-bodied” to provide for themselves and on the idea that government benefits should be earned, or, at least, ultimately traceable to one’s work effort.

[KT2000]

1. the most ridiculous

aspect of healthcare/work connection is that if a person becomes too ill to work, they lose their insurance - even if they paid for insurance for decades. An absurd system.

[kristopher]

2. K&R