Wurster, a good reason to carry insurance is what if you're in an accident through no fault of your own. Let's say a hit-and-run drunk driver sends you to the hospital.
You'll feel pretty dumb paying $100,000 out of pocket for that. More to the point it could bankrupt you and cripple your future earnings potential. Plus, you won't be earning anything while you're in the hospital, you could lose your house, etc.
I have insurance to protect my assets in case I get sick or hurt.
That is what insurance should be......a transfer of risk.
Not a "right".
Insurance per se isn't a right, but access to health care is indeed a basic human right. Insurance is simply a funding mechanism that allows us to collectively bear the cost of highly expensive yet highly unlikely events such as Wurster getting hit-and-run. As an aside, there are other more predictable events too, like women giving birth. Should women's health care cost twice as much as men's? Their overall costs are about double.
These things are too costly to pay as you go.
Also, successful health outcomes aren't achieved in the same manner in which does something like buying a car. It's a process, not an isolated consumer event.
Not a "right"
Regardless of whether or not it's a "right," it's something we should make a national priority. You don't have a "right" to drive on Interstates, but we still build them. There's nowhere in the Constitution where it says we should go to the moon, but we did it anyway.
