OCR Text |
Show 4 Friday March 30, 2012 OPINION www.dailyutahchronicle.com Mandated insurance best for all Require health insurance but allow citizens to choose which one R iot police, protesters and the legal battle that will define the decade are under way in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. The source of the chaos: the individual mandate. When a drunk driver slams his beat-up pickup truck into your new car, you get pissed. But you have a one-in-seven chance that the driver is insured and will pay for the repairs. You are most likely insured, so the sioo you pay per month suddenly looks like a great investment. The average an individual pays in the United States for health insurance is $183 per month. Insuring yourself for medical treatment potentially adds extra years to your life. In this scenario, medical insurance looks better by saving your life, not just getting you a new car. Medical problems such as cancer and heart disease happen. Sometimes, you don't see it coming and you can't get out of the way. Under existing law, a medical facility cannot turn you away if you have a fatal condition and can't pay. The good news is, you'll get treated once you're about to die — the bad news is, by then it might be too late. Factor insurance into this equation. By 2014 you will be required to purchase health insurance or pay $95 a year or 1 percent of your income (whichever is greater). By 2016 it's $695 or 2.5 percent of your income, up to $2,085 per household. So for $183 a month or $2,196 per year, on average, you can either insure yourself or you can write a check to the federal government. You'd be an idiot not to do the former. This is known as the individual mandate: Purchase medical insurance or pay an annual penalty for being uninsured. On average, uninsured Americans pay only 12 percent of their medical bills, leaving a $49 billion-a-year tab for the rest of us. Additionally, many of these uninsured people might not get the necessary follow-up appointments or procedures, for fear of the medical bills, reducing their level of health and adding to future costs. The United States spends more than any other nation in the world per person on health care. If individuals insure themselves, they are the ones making decisions about what they see is best for themselves. EALTO StaffWriter They have access to treatment, and access means a faster recovery. An individual mandate does just that, allowing each individual to make a choice as to which insurance is better for them. Americans like choice, from the fast food restaurants where we eat to the socks we buy, and the same is true for health insurance. It requires everyone, equally, to be insured and reduces the costs of providing medical services in the United States. Opponents argue that individuals should be able to choose whether or not they even want insurance. They also suggest that people who don't want insurance can pay up or die. Death in the streets isn't a pleasant image and most Americans don't seem partial to the idea of hospitals turning away dying patients, nor is it good for attracting international investment. In the United States we require individuals to carry car insurance or face a penalty — it is justified as protecting the public and its property. An individual health insurance mandate is exactly the same, yet it saves lives and money. Our nation is more competitive and robust when our citizens are healthy. Innovation requires risk, but a loss of the most innovative and productive entrepreneurs because of a lack of health insurance is not a risk worth taking. A mandate is necessary to stay competitive in the global economy and to reduce the costs of medical care, which saves lives. The alternative is socialized medicine, a path we are not willing to go down as a nation. Reducing costs, expanding access to medical care and making insurance a uniform requirement upon all citizens regardless of their economic standing are all good things, an individual mandate does it all. letters@chronicle.utah.edu SuIZAPIVO■416- Wel" roki 0 3/ilftaa, ND ONLY . I COM. In February 2011, the average number of tweets sent per day was 140 million. That much information constantly going in and out shows how massive the world SAVANNAH TURK Opinion Editor is and makes me wonder about the global access we have at our fingertips. Not all of the information on Twitter is worthwhile. Seeing Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber as the most-followed Twitter users is slightly disheartening. It demonstrates the pop culture-obsessed world that we live in, in which information describing Lady Gaga's whereabouts is the most-read information in the world. However, all major news sources use Twitter to update users on breaking stories and keep the public informed. This larger purpose that Twitter can reach is what motivated me to use the site in the first place. "It's an unedited version of what's go- ing on in the world," said Nick Banyard, a freshman in computer engineering and a fellow Twitter user. "It's not allowed to be manipulated ... Twitter is just going to put it straight out." Although I log on to my account online and have the Twitter app on my phone, I still don't feel like a full-fledged Twitter-er. I don't understand the use of hashtags or know what the signs mean. I feel like Twitter is a new language I need to learn. Understanding the Twitter lingo could open up a whole new world of resources. Twitter can keep you informed on world events, your favorites bands and what friends are doing. Not only that, but all facets of the U use Twitter to inform students of what's happening on campus. Although the hipster in me wants to reject Twitter simply because of its social popularity, it happens to be one of the biggest sources of communication that society has today. Thankfully, there is more to the site than witty tweets and celebrities. letters@ chronicle.utah.edu Online Comments "Documentaries should show, not tell" (Mimi Marstaller, March 28, 2012) Opinion a mesaman Posted on 3.28.12 at 9:02 a.m. Sorry you have been mislead, JABBA.To live in the real world one must attempt to assimilate and adapt.To live in a fantasy world one thinks of themselves as superior and accepts the mission of righting everything that's wrong, in their jaded perception. Seen any windmills lately? ColoradoRob Posted on 3.29.12 at 1 p.m. Go professor Polly Wiessner! Go Mimi! Your article is a breath of fresh air compared to the usual odor coming from the Chrony's pages. Hey, all you college kids with brains of mush - read up! Mimi's on to something important about how the world works. "A cause whose disciples can only regurgitate the dogma of others has a precarious existence." I thought about disagreeing with this statement, because the entire history of the human race is basically a continuing flow of this happening everywhere, all the time. Then it dawned on me that "precarious existence" is a pretty good way to describe causes - even if they've been enshrined in constitutions or ingrained in cultural mores or what have you. Good job, Mimi. Follow us on Twitter! tw NCON40. WILLUS BRANHAM/The Daily Utah Chronicle Old Twitter phobe now tenaciously tweeting finally broke down and got a Twitter account. It took weeks of convincing for me to finally log on to the Twitter site and put in my information, but I can no longer say that I don't know what a tweet is. For years I fervently resisted the pull of Twitter. Like many others, I could barely handle my Facebook account, let alone try to update others with my every move throughout the day. I claimed that my life was not nearly interesting enough to tweet about and rejected the idea that people cared enough to read about it in the first place. Yet here I am on my very own Twitter home page, wondering what I have become. It looks like I'm a little late to the punch. According to the blog site jeffbullas.com, as of March 2011 there were an estimated 225 million Twitter users, and that number has doubled in 2012 to 500 million, according to tweeterism. cAn tippow co-wvinftoeCirtroyvy |