Universal Health Care

Dr. Virginia Green:

I met with Ann Connolly, expert on the economics of health care reform, this weekend while I was in New York. I totally trust her brains and experience on this issue, and she made the excellent and very clear point that it is critical that as many people as possible are involved in the health care world. Today, young healthy people are often not enrolled. This is the population that should be subsidizing the less healthy population, which is how insurance is supposed to work. If the auto insurance industry only required bad drivers to have insurance, there would not be enough money to pay claims: it is good drivers that pay claims. Might not seem fair to good drivers, but there are more of us than bad drivers, so the risk is spread over a bigger population. And car insurance protects us, too.

Both the House and Senate health care reform bills include universal health coverage, which is critical to any plan. By the way, universal health care will provide everyone with access to affordable mental health services -- one of the best guarantors of wellness.