Your Interests Are Not Their Interests

I’ve been watching, but staying out of, the debate around the US health care system and how it will change.

What I don’t understand are the people who resist full insurance because they have good benefits now through work, and don’t see the need to pay for other people’s benefits.

I first don’t understand it because I just don’t get that degree of utter selfishness–of not wanting to construct a world that treats your fellow man well because you’ve got yours.

But I secondly, and more importantly, don’t understand how those people are fooling themselves into thinking that they will be protected if something really does go wrong–that the system isn’t designed to essentially destroy their lives if they do hit one of the nightmare situations. How many times do you need to read a story like this before you realize that those benefits you “have” aren’t something that’s really going to help you so long you only have them at the whim of a for-profit system.