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First, any attempt to equate health care to auto insurance is bogus. We're not talking about driving a car, where one has other options.
Having dismissed that canard, let's look at your overall suggestion. It's true that if people are given the opportunity to "opt out" because they're young and/or healthy and think they'll stay that way, you'd end up with a broken system. In fact, what you're describing isn't far from the current system we have.
The whole idea of insurance is the concept of "pooled risk." The larger the pool, the better the deal. The cost (treating the sick) is shared by the whole pool. That's why the only real solution is single-payer. Everyone in the country would be automatically covered and the system would be paid for out of general tax revenues. Tax rates would go up, presumably in a progressive fashion. But the extra tax would be far less than private insurance premiums people pay today. So it would be a net gain for 98% of the population. In other words, people would be paying less for better coverage than they have now. It's kind of a no-brainer.
Republicans will do anything they have to to scuttle this, of course. Why? Besides pleasing their corporate masters and "contributors," they know that if there's real reform, it will relegate them to the dustbin for decades the same way FDR's New Deal did. (They were even plotting a coup against FDR back then.)
Now, I share your concern about "forcing people to buy insurance." This is the wrong way to go. Such a scheme could be rightfully referred to as the "Private Insurance Racket Protection Act." Uncle Sam would act as the muscle forcing you to pay your vigorish to the lavishly-compensated billionaire insurance CEO's while they merrily go about their business lying about their policies' "benefits" to get you in the door, then deny your claims while they kick you out the back door -- minus your wallet.
But you lose your rationale when you talk about "cost shifting." How does that work? If someone gets sick and has no insurance, regardless of whether they "should have" or not, it is still a benefit to society as a whole that they get treated. The threat of docking their pay (assuming they have enough to "dock" in the first place) will simply motivate them to not seek treatment, guaranteeing a bigger drain on both their health and society as a whole.
Again, this is why single-payer is the only thing that works. Everyone can get the help they need regardless of their ability to pay, and we don't lose 20% or more off the top to profit-skimming parasites who contribute nothing to society at all.
Even the "public option" plans offered so far fail miserably. Unless everyone is enrolled in the same system (single-payer,) you will dilute the risk pool. Even the most optimistic descriptions about such a scheme, where private insurance could no longer deny claims (they've already testified they'll never agree to stop that practice) or refuse coverage for pre-existing conditions, you'd still have a fractured risk pool. Each plan, private or public, would be its own risk pool and it would pale in comparison to a national single risk pool like you have with single-payer.
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