In his diary “I Don’t Want Health Insurance; I Don’t Need Insurance” Rolandz describes an encounter with an individual who cursed the ACA and the lack of “personal responsibility” by all the leeches who he imagined are the beneficiaries of the program. What he, and the millions more like him, fails to understand is that people without insurance who are struck by a life threatening affliction don't quietly go off and die so the rest of us aren't burdened by the cost. Or walk around with an untreated broken leg. Rather they seek the care they need and stick the providers with the cost. The providers then raise their prices so the rest of society pays the cost. It's what currently passes for universal health insurance in this country. What they don't see, or don’t want to see, is that they are already paying the cost, just at a higher rate than any other developed nation in the world. It’s a perverse form of insurance premium that we are all forced to pay because of free-loaders like this guy.
Their problem is that they don’t want to pay for what they have already been getting for free, the right to live with the knowledge that they will not be turned away from getting care. In other words they've been getting free health insurance all along and they’re pissed off they have to pay for it now. (BTW…these are the same voices that don’t want to pay for destroying the environment for the same reason.)
So here’s a real simple solution to these morons. Anybody who wants to opt out of insurance can do so for any reason. But there’s a catch. If they get hit with cancer or any potentially terminal illness they will be unable to get care. They will die. It’s called “personal responsibility”. Under these circumstances I suspect the choruses of “I don’t need health insurance” will quickly disappear.