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I’m : a programmer, writer, podcaster, geek, and coffee enthusiast.

What if there wasn’t any insurance?

fatmanatee presents this scenario:

So why have insurance anyway? Other investment vehicles provide similar services, only their value is dollars, rather than services used. A person without healthcare can simply invest their money and take out for medical payments as they feel necessary.

[…]

Obviously, this would all require a lot more diligent personal investment from everybody, and perhaps that’s a lot to ask for.

That’s too much to ask for. If people were good at financial management and self-control, the massive credit card, payroll advance, and debt consolidation industries wouldn’t exist.

Social Security is a system designed with the same intention as insurance: to protect unfortunate people from the unforeseen, the unlikely, and themselves.

Without insurance, we’d have some problems in addition to financial irresponsibility:

…and probably many more that I’m not thinking of.