Religion, Pukers, and Health Insurance

While sitting on the floor in my previously described room of balls browsing skanks' Facebook walls, a trend I've noticed got me thinking. I noticed between vibrations of my computer caused by the bass coming from the much more female friendly room above me that there is a direct correlation between the skankishness of a Facebook page and the likelihood that said skank will quote a bible verse on their profile. This got me thinking about all the familiar and widespread examples of hypocrisy among the religious beyond the trite example of skanks. Ted Haggard, Catholic priests, terrorists, the religious right, etc etc etc. Balls or lolz readers will be happy to know that I have developed a theory to try to answer the timeless question, "Why are so many religious people such pukers?"

The answer is in thinking about certain organized religions as a sort of really, really terribly managed health insurance agency.

Here's the idea: An insurance company operates by gambling on the wellbeing of its customers. If it wins most of its bets then it has money at the end of the day and can continue to sell insurance. If not, it either needs a government bailout or it will go to insurance company heaven. Because people tend to enjoy staying alive, they are 'risk averse' and are paranoid about dying or getting hurt so they bet that they will get sick. The insurance company, with its voodoo economic models which no one understands, can make a pretty good bet that people won't get sick and thus they make a profit and can continue to exist.

One big problem for the insurance company though is the asymmetry of information. When I go to buy insurance I know everything about my health. The insurance company only knows that I am a 21-year-old white male college student. Because of this asymmetry I have an advantage over the insurance company. I know exactly whether or not the deal they are offering me is to my benefit and they can only make a guess. If I have a weird lump on my balls or have been a smoker and fast food addict since ten, I am pretty sure that I want health insurance because the likely pay off is huge. However if I am a perfectly healthy Olympic athlete, or a certain invincible drunk college roommate who is pretty sure they won't drive off the side of my steep driveway at 2 AM, I am less likely to seek out health insurance because the likely payoff is going to be smaller.

This concept is called 'Adverse selection', which is when an insurance company gets plagued by bad bets because the customers have more information than they do. This is also the basis for criticism of Barack Obama's universal health care plan, which does not require everyone to be covered and thus invites the adverse selection menace. Organized religion can be seen as being plagued by adverse selection.

The insurance plan they are offering is this: By earning Jesus' forgiveness you can insure your eternal soul from burning in hell by going to church, telling people about Jesus all the time, not masturbating, and putting Proverbs X:X on your Facebook wall. The price is pretty small, given the infinitely large payoff.

Those who feel they are good people and are pretty sure they will get into heaven don't feel the need to go to church and tell everyone about Jesus. To them it is like buying UFO attack insurance or Anti-Santa insurance (unlike the Jolly Elf who Ho-Hos and distributes gifts to children across the world on Christmas Eve, an Anti-Santa closely resembles one of my roommates who may or may not roam the neighborhood late at night with a garbage bag slung over their shoulder puking and distributing their trash in various backyards to avoid buying trash stickers). Although it would be really bad to be attacked by a UFO or an Anti-Santa, most people are unlikely to buy insurance for such a thing, even if the cost is relatively small. However those who genuinely feel there is a good case for them going to hell are willing to pay the price. Those such as Ted Haggerd who seem to be paying an unusually high price must be attempting to buy extra coverage.

Therefore, if one were to look at the portfolio of any given church, it would most likely have more bad apples relative to good ones and thus be morally bankrupt.

There are two solutions religions have for this adverse selection problem. One, like Hilary Clinton's health care plan, is to demand universal coverage. Everyone has to go to church and talk about Jesus all the time in order to avoid hell, the good people too. That way the virtue of the good people can pick up the slack of the pukers.

The second option is a major government bailout for the insolvent institution similar to the ones that were given to mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. According to the historical record this has already been done once, when Jesus died on the cross and absolved us of all of our sins. However, because no structural changes were made to the soul insurance institution the buzz is that a similar bailout is scheduled for sometime in the near future.