In their letter to the Tuesday Wall Street Journal Letters section, Professors Amy Finkelstein, of MIT, and Matthew Notowidigdo, of the University of Chicago, argued for the necessity of Obamacare.

…because millions of Americans “don’t use” their subsidized insurance, they therefore “don’t need” it. Yet as we teach our students every year, this misunderstands the purpose of insurance. Not filing a claim doesn’t mean you didn’t need insurance. We’ve never had to use our oxygen masks during decades of flying, but that hardly means they’re not essential.

The professors, as educated as they seem to be, should know better than to make such a false comparison. Folks die if they don’t have access to those oxygen masks in the realization of the once-in-a-lifetime likelihood of needing one. Folks without insurance always can get at least life saving care, and usually more than that for a variety of non-life threatening ills, in any hospital ER.

The professors also cynically conflate “need” with “useful.” Having insurance against this or that outcome usually is a useful backstop to have, IFF the accumulated premiums paid are worth the Expected [sic] cost of a realized outcome. Underlying the distinction between “need” and “useful” is the individual’s own assessment of those risks and that value. With Obamacare, though, folks are required to buy the insurance, however bad it is, and to do so wholly independently of any cost/benefit tradeoff that actually exists and equally independent of the individual’s assessment of his risk, or of his need. Risk assessment has been taken out of the individual’s hands altogether.