One of the arguments against an individual mandate is that people should be able to make the choice if they want to contract with any health insurance company, whether that company is a public one or a private one. The younger healthier Americans are the ones being held up as the people who would be unfairly put upon by this requirement. However that assumes these folks are making an informed decision about what it means to be without insurance. Just because you are relatively healthy in your 20's does not equate to not needing insurance. We know that younger citizens are more likely to be in major car crashes than older citizens are. Younger people also are more likely to take risks older folks would shy away from. Part of this is the nature of maturing, but it also makes them less able to evaluate the actual risks of being without health coverage. The choice (if they get a chance to make a choice) is far more important than if they can see a doctor for that rash they developed. A new study in the Archives of Surgery, studied the survival rates of trauma patients looking to see if there was a difference between insured and uninsured patients. To reduce the instance of outside factors causing death, the study looked specifically at patients 18 to 30 years of age. Since this group is healthier than older folks it makes for a good control. The findings were pretty shocking. First off,