Is having medical insurance for you and your family important to you or d'ya think it's just a socialist welfare handout for lazy bums? Y?

It's extremely important but it is not welfare. I paid into medicaire all my working life and I have Tri-Care for retired military as a free supplemental. Co-pays are zero on medical and $8 for scrips....But I earned it.

Of course, it is important but sadly not always affordable. 

We don't care to pay for all the "lazy bums". 

I haven't had medical insurance for a couple of years now because it's too expensive. The cheapest plan I can get on is more than $400/ month and it's a catastrophic plan that doesn't kick in unless I have a serious health issue or am hospitalized. That's not reasonable for me. I looked into cost-share programs, but those are in the $300 range and all seem to require that I be religious. *shrugs* So, my plan has just been not to get sick. So far, it is working out. *knocks on wood*

I don't know how insurance companies got away from the understanding of insuring younger healthy people as a means to subsidize the costs of people who require more care. If it was reasonably-priced, they'd be earning on me. It's not, so I don't have coverage. I went through the same thing with my auto insurance. Sort of. I realized I could have car insurance for $50/ mo and I was paying around $150. I went to my insurance company, with whom I hadn't ever filed an accident claim with in the 20 years I'd had them, and was like, "Look, you've made over $30,000 off me so far. If you can't get the costs lower, I'm leaving." They wished me luck with my new company. lol Wouldn't it be nice if health insurance worked the same? If it was actually affordably-priced and we could switch whenever?

In any case, I'm a believer in socialized medicine and education. 

"The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members." -Gandhi