Your argument is fair enough in a world where the insurance market is relatively free. Anyone should be free to elect which risk-pool they choose to associate themselves with through their choice of an insurance policy. I remember from my childhood songbooks at church that advertised a policy tailored to tee-totalers. Likewise, if you could find enough people who avoided Sarah Palin rallies and wanted to assume a shared risk-burden, then, yes, I don’t think anyone here would have any problem with a company establishing a policy suited to you and your friends. The reality is that your purchase of a policy is subsidizing the risk assumed by all others with that same policy. So far, so good.

The problem arises when the market choice is removed and you are told “You may choose any insurance policy you want, but it must without exception cover the risk of attending Palin rallies.” Sounds ludicrous, doesn’t it? But that is what the Obama administration is proposing. And that is what many of us are objecting to.

To use a simple example, suppose I hate gay nightclubs. I call up my auto insurance company and tell them that I will never go to a gay nightclub and would like a policy that does not cover me for any accident that I might cause pulling in or out of such a club. Since I’m opting for less coverage than I current have, I’ll be expecting some type of discount.

No doubt the response is going to be no you’re covered and for both legal and economic reasons we can’t and won’t craft a specialized policy for you that doesn’t cover you when driving by gay nightclubs….if you don’t want to go to such clubs then simply don’t. My response, being that I’ve been trained to be annoying like Joe, is that I’m being forced to subsidize those who do go to gay night clubs.

Am I wrong? I mean is it not a fact that auto insurance covers people who drive to gay night clubs and if they get into accidents they will pay out? Since I never go there I will never benefit from that tiny slice of ‘coverage’ so my money must be going to subsidize those who hang out at gay night clubs?

But this game works in all directions. It can be claimed just as easily that ‘my money’ is subsidizing those who are attending Tea Party rallies, Sarah Palin speeches, or Fundamentalist Churches….

However this is where a bit of sanity is needed. When you buy an insurance policy, it isn’t ‘your money’, it’s ‘your insurance policy’. That you may be covered for doing things you aren’t going to do (driving to the club) and things you are (Tea Party rally?). Likewise whatever is done with the money that used to be yours ceases to be your business.

If you don’t adopt this POV, not only does the health plan but all of economic life becomes impossibly incoherent. Want to go to McDonalds with the kids? How do you know those min. wage workers aren’t taking their pay and having abortions? Donating to churches you consider immoral? Doing bad things you wouldn’t want done with your money?

For – unfortunately not – the last time:
pregnancy (nascent human life) is not a disease!