Michigan No Fault

 In Michigan we have something called "no fault" auto insurance.  That means everyone is required to insure themselves.  It replaced something called "personal liability and property damage" insurance, way back in the 1970s if memory serves.  With no fault, your own insurance company pays you regardless of who is determined to be at fault in an accident.  I think you can still sue the other guy if he is determined to be at fault, but that's over and above what your own insurance pays you.  No fault was supposed to be cheaper, I suspected that it wouldn't be and voted against it, but they passed it anyway.  Sure enough, insurance premiums went up soon after no fault was passed, and they have continued to go up ever since.  Of course some of that is due to general inflation, but not all of it. The good news is that, if you are hit by an uninsured motorist, it doesn't affect your payout. There must be lots of uninsured motorists out there because newspaper accounts commonly include "no proof of insurance" in the list of charges when they report a driver getting ticketed for something else.  Another common infraction reported is "driving with a suspended license".  

The difference between insuring your auto and insuring your health is the roads are owned by the government and your body is not, at least not yet.  They keep telling us that driving is a privilege not a right.  I don't know if health care was ever considered a privilege, but many people nowadays consider it to be a right, and I tend to agree with them.  I think health care is more comparable to police and fire protection than it is to driving.  We are not required by the government to insure ourselves against crime and fire, although we have the option of doing so if we want to.  Health care could be like that, with the government providing a certain basic level of protection, leaving people the option of buying additional protection if they want to.  Let's face it, rich people are always going to be better off than poor people, but I don't see anything wrong with the government providing a safety net for the poor, as long as they don't make us all poor in the process.   

I'm not in the mood to write a bio right now, maybe later.