July 20, 2007
The Young Invincibles
NYMag.com has an excellent feature on the lives of working but uninsured New York twenty-somethings.
One interesting paragraph shows how one individual conceptualizes health insurance in terms of cell phone cost.
Andrew Kuo, a 29-year-old painter, told me he made a vow to be insured by the time he turned 30. “But that was when 30 seemed like a ways away,” he added. “Now I find myself making all these stupid calculations. Like, it would cost me around $3,000 a year to have insurance, right? Okay, isn’t that about what it would cost out of pocket if I broke my wrist? Chances are I’m not going to break my wrist once a year, so why not save the money for that onetime emergency?” Like many I spoke with, Kuo said he’d happily pay for insurance, if only the cost-benefit analysis tilted more in its favor. “What’s ironic is that I would never live without my cell phone, but I won’t consider buying health insurance. It sounds ridiculous to say that out loud, but the fact is insurance is just too expensive. If it was the same price as my phone”—$150 a month sounded reasonable to him—“I’d buy it in a second.”