Health insurance’s benefit is not “mostly or exclusively

Health insurance’s benefit is not “mostly or exclusively financial.” Nor, for most people, is the first purpose of insurance economic protection.

Rather, health insurance, Medicare and Medicaid’s primary benefit is to spread the cost and therefore share the benefits of health care for people who either cannot afford it or will not buy it until it is too late. It helps keep our social network functional.

Health insurance enables us to obtain, without any economic disincentives, basic health care, including vaccinations, childbirth, children’s checkups and other routine health care. With insurance, we can all afford and therefore benefit from basic health benefits.

Medicaid is not “deeply dysfunctional.” It, like Medicare, actually provides less expensive health care and to a less healthy part of our population than private health insurance.

BARBARA W. GOLD
STEPHEN F. GOLD
Philadelphia, May 6, 2013

The writers are a pediatrician and a disability rights lawyer, respectively.

To the Editor:

Ross Douthat presents an intriguing idea to replace Obamacare’s guarantee of full coverage with a plan limited to catastrophic expenses. But he has his politics reversed.

Liberals have offered numerous proposals for similar coverage flexibility, only to be met with cries of “death panels” and “rationing.” When Mr. Douthat assumes that conservatives are natural allies for his idea, he is looking for support in the wrong place.