To have health insurance is very essential for everybody’s life. It makes people’s life more easy, especially when it comes to paying nothing or less money for medications or doctor’s visit. Therefore, in the United States, it is important to have health insurance. Not only this, health insurance providers tend to provide their insurance for high cost due to its importance for people’s health. If you are diagnosed with a chronic disease, the insurance provider will most probably deny you to get insurance because they know that they will pay more than what you are going to pay for them. In other words, their marginal benefit (how much money they get from you) is less than their marginal cost (how much money they pay for your healthcare).
Without health insurance, people face very hard time seeing a doctor or getting checked up. If a doctor is not paid, he or she will not offer you the service you need for free. All the people with no health insurance spend tons of money to take care of or treat their health.
There are various ways for you to be provided with healthcare insurance. The most interested and awkward one is when you get your healthcare insurance through your job. Having your healthcare insurance provided from your job is something that you should think about twice before getting it. Meaning that if you have healthcare insurance that is tied to your job, you will be tied to your job as well. So, you tend to stay working at your job even when you don’t like it just because you need your health insurance. This leads me to talk about the opportunity cost. In our textbook, the opportunity cost is being defined as “The opportunity cost of an item is what you give up to get that item” (Mankiw, 2013, 6). In this case, your comfort at your job is what you are giving up, and your insurance is the item that you want to get by having to face hard time at your job.
In other cases, incentive occurs. As I have learned by reading the textbook that incentive means “Something that induces a person to act” (Mankiw, 2013, 7). So, incentive happens when people tend to quit their job or get a part-time job instead of a full-time, so they will be eligible for Illinois Medicaid which is a healthcare insurance provided for people with low income.
So, is it fair to have no job in order to get a free healthcare insurance? Or is it possible to get a healthcare insurance for a fair amount of money while having a good full-time job?
Sources:
Nydivide. “John Stossel and the Case for Free Market Health Care (Part 1 of 5).”YouTube. YouTube, 28 Aug. 2010. Web. 26 Jan. 2017
N. Gregory Mankind, Principles of Macroeconomics, 7e
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This is a very interesting topic.Some of the concerns you’ve raised in your post are very close to my recent live decisions.I quit my job after 9 years .I worked a lot of hours and didn’t have a life.Also big aspect in my decision making was school.I’ve been in school for 4 years trying to get my associates degree and because of my job I was able to take only 2 classes per semester.If I stayed it would have taken me another 4-5 years to graduate..That’s Insane ! Anyway ,once I left my job I lost my insurance.
So getting to the point now..Incentive occurred,I left my job to have more time on my hand and finish school within a reasonable time.That was the trigger that pushed me to this decision.Now I have two part time jobs ,more time to fucus on school ,but no insurance. I’m making less money,but making too much to get Obama Care to cover some of the insurance costs.I go to a doctor once a year for a check up .I do not have any chronic diseases.So now marginal benefit ( how much they get from me) is higher than marginal cost ( how much insurance company spends on me ) .Is it fair ? I don’t think so..
I’m curious about your future posts and other student’s opinions.Maybe all together we can find a solution?
Anna Freudenreich
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Health insurance seems to be a very sensitive topic. Access to better health should not be something we have to choose or make trade-offs. It should be consider as a requirement for all and not a select few. I know of friends and family members who are in the fields of employment at various companies only because of the health benefits that come with working at a particular company. How sad!
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I actually wrote about the same topic in my first blog and it is really sad to how people are giving up a lot of things just to get the heath care insurance. Also, I experienced this when I first came to the U.S. because I had to work part time not even considered as a part time because I worked for like only one day a week for only five hours in order to keep my medicaid.
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The Affordable Care Act puts consumers back in charge of their health care. Under the law, a new “Patient’s Bill of Rights” gives the American people the stability and flexibility they need to make informed choices about their health. The patients’ Bill of Rights was put into place in 2010 by former Present Obama to protect individuals from being denied insurance that have preexisting conditions (HHS.gov, 2017).
There are many individuals that work full time just for the benefits. Healthcare, 401K, profit sharing seem to be big incentives for working full time. Bigger businesses offer their full employees insurance to them and to their families. An employee premium may be cheaper than going with a private insurance company, adding your family to your work insurance bumps up the monthly premium considerably. Which is really the better option; Medicaid, The Affordable Care Act or receiving health insurance through your work? Individuals who may quit their jobs to collect Medicaid also are at a disadvantage; they no longer have a job and may have difficulties paying for other necessities. The incentive to working would be the quality of life that it may bring you, your family and people close to you. The Affordable Care Act provides a good option to individuals that work for smaller companies or freelance and could not afford healthcare because private insurance companies were allowed to charge high premiums to individuals that did work for corporations that provided health insurance. How much does The Affordable Care Act cost? It depends on the level of coverage you want; if you qualify for a grant, where you live, your age and of course if you’re a smoker. The 1st of 10 Principles of Economics in Gregory Mankiw’s book is that people face trade-offs. “A trade-off society faces is between efficiency and equality”. Efficiency and equality means getting all of the benefits from scarce resources to be able to provide all members of society with the same options equally (Mankiw, 2013, 4, 5). The government is providing healthcare to all members of society and is a trade-off for individuals needing to work and contributing to society.
Resources: http://www.hhs.gov/healthcare/about-the-law/index.html#
N. Gregory Mankiw, 2013 Principles of Microeconomics pp 4-5
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