Health Insurance

You need this. People get sick all the time. And yes, you need insurance to hedge against something breaking your bank and then your back, trying to pay back the hospital. You need health insurance, more as a bargaining chip than you need it as an insurance policy with intrinsic cash value.

Why? Because insurance companies...when you get ill, or go to the hospital, or go for treatment...negotiate with scale leverage against, say, hospitals for the care they give.

That is, a given insurance company might have 20,000 customers in a given area. So when that customer needs a box of Kleenex, the insurance company doesn't allow the hospital to load on all kinds of, well, load. Or other amortize-able costs the hospital incurred in ordering the Kleenex and storing it and stocking it and paying for the heat in the building and paying for the nurse's union pension benefits program and, ironically, the hospital's own insurance.

So when that insurance company negotiates, they get that box for you for 4 bucks. Yes, it's a bit more than you'd pay at Safeway or Krogers or Target. But if you have no insurance, then you have nobody negotiating with a big fat club in their hand on your behalf. That is, you, the uninsured consumer shlub, pay $28 for that box of Kleenex.

Why? Because the hospital has to pay its bills somehow. And if the insurance company won't let it get away with things, then it has to find suckers who will.