(I’m gonna address this explicitly in terms of the financials, since that was your comment. This is aside from my belief that people are inherently deserving of healthcare, among other things.)
If medical issues go untreated, regardless of cause, taxpayers are paying for it anyway - just in different and subtler ways. The cost of the injury has successfully been deflected from insurers to society at large. As has been said before: privative profits, socialized losses.
I don’t think anyone would argue that preventative care or getting treatment in a timely manner are a bad thing for reducing long-term costs. What was once a fractured ankle (in this case) can turn into a lifelong, crippling disability. What’s better: someone (insurers? taxpayers?) just paying the 500-1000 deductible, or taxpayers paying for the long-term effects of lack of- or delayed-treatment for the rest of that patients life?
Even if we don’t end up having to pay for direct welfare programs for this person, do you think having one more person with a disability is a net positive for the societal financials? As opposed to just chipping in the cash to help out and “striking while the iron’s hot” in that critical window before a treatable injury becomes a much-harder-to-treat injury or (worse yet) a chronic condition
(I’m gonna address this explicitly in terms of the financials, since that was your comment. This is aside from my belief that people are inherently deserving of healthcare, among other things.)
If medical issues go untreated, regardless of cause, taxpayers are paying for it anyway - just in different and subtler ways. The cost of the injury has successfully been deflected from insurers to society at large. As has been said before: privative profits, socialized losses.
I don’t think anyone would argue that preventative care or getting treatment in a timely manner are a bad thing for reducing long-term costs. What was once a fractured ankle (in this case) can turn into a lifelong, crippling disability. What’s better: someone (insurers? taxpayers?) just paying the 500-1000 deductible, or taxpayers paying for the long-term effects of lack of- or delayed-treatment for the rest of that patients life?
Even if we don’t end up having to pay for direct welfare programs for this person, do you think having one more person with a disability is a net positive for the societal financials? As opposed to just chipping in the cash to help out and “striking while the iron’s hot” in that critical window before a treatable injury becomes a much-harder-to-treat injury or (worse yet) a chronic condition