No, You Don't Deserve to Keep Your Insurance Plan

OK, yes, Barack Obama lied, and that's provoked some "justifiable scrutiny," Jonathan Chait at New York allows. But the people losing their health insurance plans aren't getting a raw deal, he argues. For one thing, many are blissfully unaware that their old, seemingly affordable plans contained hidden costs and limitations that would have left them high and dry in an emergency. "The fine print is a game of wits between insurer and customer that the insurer always wins."

Even so, some healthy people will see their premiums rise. But in exchange, they get the knowledge that they'll have coverage if they ever get sick. "You might even call such a guarantee 'insurance.'" Some still complain that it's morally wrong to force them to buy that bargain. "But they can't quite face up to the full implications of their complaint." It's a "mathematical truism" that giving the sick care they can't afford means charging the healthy more. If you believe the healthy deserve to keep their cheap rates, "you must also believe the sick must be denied medical care." Read his full column here.