"The implicit standard in analysis of the health insurance system is that every consumer must have government-selected coverage. But why?"

"This chosen paradigm doesn't take into consideration the most forceful motivation of human behavior, namely, whether a large expenditure of limited resources is in one's economic interest. This standard of 'universal coverage' is as artificial as the government's bloated health care costs. A young person with minimal health expenses is well served not to purchase one of these government-created insurance policies: their yearly medical expenses do not exceed the cost of their premiums and deductibles. With the rate Obamacare costs are skyrocketing, that pool isn't just confined to young people anymore. If an individual or family has to fork out tens of thousands of dollars before seeing health care benefits, what's the point? Why not save that money and when services are needed, pay directly to the care providers?"

Good questions asked by Liz Sheld at PJ Media.

I don't know what the answers are, but I'm suspicious of mainstream media for obscuring these questions, which were also obscured when Obamacare was passed. Healthy young people who'd been choosing not to buy insurance were needed in the pool, paying premiums, to make it possible for companies to be forced to take in and keep customers with pre-existing conditions. The pro-Obamacare propaganda continually presented insurance coverage as an end in itself, as if the individual is better off with insurance. But really the idea was more that the entire system of financing health care with private insurance companies is better off if more people participate — especially more people who don't have high current expenses — that is, the kind of people who, left to their own devices, are most likely to prefer to use their money to buy something other than insurance they don't think they're going to use.

It's a difficult scheme, and to pull it off, it seems that people need to be fooled. The key to the fooling — I think — is to speak in terms of how many people are "covered," not in terms of how many people are better off. Right now, it seems that many of the people who have coverage pay a lot of money for something they can't use. If they are not better off in that position, why are we supposed to feel bad if they get a reprieve from needing to pay a lot of money for something that has no value to them? I think the secret answer is: Because insurance companies need that money to keep paying the bills for the customers who do have expensive conditions, the people who are happy to get to pay premiums because they get back more than they put in.

I wish we could speak clearly and honestly about the real problems. I find the complexity — confused by partisan propaganda — horrible. And I am not dealing with a struggle to pay premiums or any serious health problems. I do not see how most people can be expected to engage with these issues other than to gravitate toward the propaganda of one side or the other and be scared.