Mandatory car, health insurance benefit everyone

Jim Cassidy, Henderson

Saturday, Feb. 19, 2011 | 2:01 a.m.

Regarding Robert E. Smith’s Friday letter to the editor, headlined “Car insurance not the same as health care insurance”:

I would like to expand on his letter.

When a person is required to carry liability insurance for an automobile he owns, the objective is to ensure that the owner can make restitution to anyone who is damaged by this vehicle. When a taxpayer is required to carry health care insurance, the objective is to ensure that all other taxpayers will not have to pay for health care of the uninsured.

Currently, uninsured taxpayers and illegal immigrants are given health care when they are in peril. This is because our society at large is not prepared to turn these people from emergency services when they are needed — you know, left dying at the curb.

In the end, taxpayers pay for a lot of this, and the rest is absorbed by medical facilities that are going out of business. Under our current system, one way or another, it will be paid for until everyone’s money is gone.

Requiring taxpayers to own health care insurance is in fact not just for us as individuals — by extension, it is for all of us.