We're Not Stupid

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read from the transcript of the Supreme Court hearing on The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  In response to the argument by the Solicitor General that a mandate is required because the young and healthy won’t pay for insurance they don’t think they’ll need, Justice Scalia countered,

 “We’re not stupid. They’re going to buy insurance later. They’re young and need the money now….When they think they have a substantial risk of incurring high medical bills, they’ll buy insurance, like the rest of us….I don’t know why you think that they’re never going to buy it.”

 Justice Scalia has obviously never had to buy a health insurance policy.  If he had, he’d know about the questions relating to pre-existing conditions.  The hopeful insurance buyer who had just gotten a diagnosis of an expensive medical condition would find that the very diagnosis that led him or her to buy a plan would be evidence the insurer would use to deny coverage.  Justice Scalia goes on to prove the Solicitor General’s point,

 “You could solve that problem by simply not requiring the insurance company to sell it to somebody who has a condition that is going to require medical treatment, or at least not require them to sell it to him at a rate that he sells it to healthy people. But you don’t want to do that.”

 Insurance companies do that.  That’s the problem.  That’s why 40 million Americans don’t have health insurance.  In a free market insurers can’t sell policies to those who wait to pay premiums until they are ready to cash in on the benefits.  He must know that.  He’s not stupid.