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In the US, why doesn't a personal savings account make more sense than health insurance? (piefed.social)

submitted 20 hours ago by CptHacke@piefed.social to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

57 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hear me out on this, please.

Let's say that I spend $5k on health insurance in a year, but don't go to the doctor or have any medical issues in that year. Where does my money go? It disappears. I basically just gave away my money, and received nothing in return. However, if I took that $5k and simply put it into a personal savings account instead of giving it away to a health insurance provider - that money stays right there if and whenever I decide to use it. It even collects interest.

I realize that with a health insurance provider, you're (supposedly) getting discounted rates on medical services - but if your money is just disappearing into thin air if you don't happen to need those medical services in a given year, are you really saving money? It just seems like a really big scam to me - what am I missing?

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[–] vapordays@leminal.space 1 points 18 hours ago

Health insurance is a scam, yes, it's part of the bigger scam called capitalism, which is the privatization of profits and socialization of losses. A private "savings account" is not escaping the scam, it is at best side-stepping it, into a different method, even less efficient, where everyone in society just does (and pays for) every little thing on their own. Why don't we all just pay individually for each unit of oxygen we breathe?

Something better would be simply that we find a way to efficiently pay for everyone, as much as possible, to have healthcare (among a number of other things). Until something better can exist, this is "public insurance."