Here is why everyone needs health insurance. Kevin Drum cites an article which found that at one hospital, a patient was billed $10,169 for a lipid panel. This is a very simple test that is ordered for most people at one time or another and sometimes the bill is for as little as $10. That's probably about what my insurance actually pays when I get one of those. Why was someone billed for more than ten grand?
The researchers have no idea. No insurance company will pay $10,000 for a lipid panel, of course, so the only point of pricing it this high is to exploit the occasional poor sap with no health insurance who happens to need his cholesterol checked. Welcome to health care in America. Best in the world, baby.
Those who want to nuke Obamacare will argue that the free market will bring costs under control. Well, it never has…and health care is not and can never really be a free market because you can't really go shopping about and getting estimates when your life may be on the line. It's not a free market from the perspective of the health care providers either, because they're legally and morally obligated to treat a lot of people who can't pay or will never pay…so they make up for it by socking it to the guy has (a) a little dough, (b) no insurance and (c) high cholesterol.
If my mother had not had excellent health insurance and was forced to pay full retail for the health care she required her last twenty years, she would have lost her home and all her savings and I might have lost mine…and she still would have had to do without certain treatments that kept her alive.