Health care a necessity

Contrary to what Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell would like you to believe, there is no such thing as a free market in health care. It is not a consumer product that you can choose or not choose to use. You can choose to purchase an automobile, or to just rely on Uber to get you from place to place, but you cannot choose whether you have a heart attack or get cancer. If you do choose to buy a car, you can choose to spend $10,000 on a used Honda or $200,000 on a Ferrari. However, if you get in an accident in your chosen vehicle, you cannot choose to get $10,000 worth of care or $200,000.

If you are making $30,000 a year at a low end job, you could choose to spend 30 to 40 percent of that to buy insurance that might protect you from bankruptcy, but you wouldn’t have much of a life with what you had left. If you choose not to buy insurance, then you better wear a large sign that says “Do Not Help Me” if you happen to end up unconscious in a public place, because you will certainly end up bankrupt.

Daniel J. Schaffer

Spokane