The season is upon us again, not the holidays, but the ACA yearly sign-up period. As usual, there will be a lot of misinformation out there.
There are actually some right-wingers and other assorted anti-Obama hatemongers out there who are actively, brazenly trying to discourage young adults in this country from participating in the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) and obtaining health coverage. They are doing this for purely partisan reasons, and they really do not care about the actual people they are trying to bamboozle.
Therefore, I have decided to take a lighter approach (nobody likes being lectured) and simply present a few funny, non-threatening examples to illustrate my basic premise: sometimes bad things happen that are not your fault, and insurance is there to help with that. So as not to be a peddler of fear, I will use the example of automobile insurance with incidents involving no physical injury whatsoever.
I once had a job with a 50 mile each way commute on the Pennsylvania Turnpike (which is not only a lousy highway, it is a super expensive toll road). As I was driving to work one day, after a heavy snow storm, I was involved in an accident. The road surface that I was driving on was clear, but the secondary roads were generally not. As I passed under a bridge, a huge truck with a snow plow on the front barrelled across the overpass, sending snow and chunks of ice over the side, shattering my windshield and one headlight, and damaging the hood. The PA Turnpike is a limited access highway, so YES, I actually had an accident involving another vehicle while we were traveling on two different roads that did not connect! This was not my fault. I did not collect anything for damages from the other vehicle, either. Sometimes bad stuff happens. It is not your fault. You need backup.
Here is another anecdote. This one happened when I was in college. I was to be presented with an award, and all spiffed up with my jacket and tie folded on the passenger seat, I was driving to the award banquet. It was an unusually hot day, around ninety degrees, and all of the car windows, front and back, were wide open. Western Pennsylvania is very hilly, and as I drove on route 30 from my home near Irwin to Latrobe (Saint Vincent College), I drove down a steep grade, then began to climb Greengate Hill. I was in the slow lane, and a truck was in the fast lane, speeding to get a run at the hill. It was a tanker truck. As the truck overtook and began to pass me as we ascended the steep hill, I heard something strange. As the truck passed me, I was suddenly drenched with a white liquid. There was a pipe coming from the stainless steel tank from the center of the base and bent toward the right. As the truck had tilted, all the liquid within had rushed to the back, giving enough pressure to squirt through the pipe. It was ninety degrees, I was soaking wet, and my car had a foot of milk in it. The driver thought the tank was empty, and the valve was left open.
Sometimes things happen which are not your fault. But these things I just mentioned were only about cars. If auto insurance were really like health insurance, you might not have a choice where they towed your car, and when you get to the garage, the mechanic might have charged you a couple of hundred grand to replace your fender. And another mechanic who breezed by might charge you another hundred grand.
Think about it.