When the Penalty Looks Good

The New York Times reports that many of the suckers healthy people who were supposed to prop up ObamaCare are crunching the numbers and choosing to remain without what leftists call health insurance:

[P]lenty of healthy holdouts remain, and their resistance helps explain why insurers are worried about the financial viability of the exchanges over time. They say they sorely need more healthy customers to balance out the costs of covering the sicker, older people who have flocked to exchange plans.

...

Many holdouts have made their decisions after meticulously comparing the cost of insurance premiums and deductibles with paying for doctor appointments, lab tests and prescriptions themselves. For some healthy people, the combined cost of premiums and deductibles, which can exceed $10,000, makes the penalty seem a better deal.

For 2016 and beyond, the penalty will be $695 per adult or 2.5 percent of household income, up from $325 per adult or 2 percent of household income last year.

Interestingly, few of the people in the story seem to have heard about some of the better options (outside the federally-run "insurance" scheme), such as concierge medicine, and the story makes it sound like they are taking a gamble. (And I imagine many are: The government running everything has a way of shriveling imaginations and causing people to assume that other alternatives aren't available.)

We ought to do something about this sad state of affairs: We should scrap the ACA and make actual health insurance legal again.

-- CAV