I read a great write-up about Obama’s favorite way of justifying strict penalties for not buying health insurance (which, as you know, is part of his wildly destructive health plan). He loves to compare it to car insurance. He says, “What I think is appropriate is that in the same way that everybody has to get auto insurance and if you don’t, you’re subject to some penalty, that in this situation, if you have the ability to buy insurance, it’s affordable and you choose not to do so, forcing you and me and everybody else to subsidize you, you know, there’s a thousand dollar hidden tax that families all across America are — are burdened by because of the fact that people don’t have health insurance, you know, there’s nothing wrong with a penalty.”
Ah, but see – there IS something wrong with it. It’s unconstitutional. As the article so nicely points out, here are the differences between mandating car insurance and mandating health insurance:
- Everybody doesn’t have to buy car insurance. You can choose not to drive and then you don’t need to buy the insurance.
- The only way to avoid mandatory health insurance will be to stop breathing. Our federal government has never required us to buy something just to exist in America.
- Driving is a privilege, Living and breathing is a right.
- You can choose liability coverage only for your car. Government will mandate what’s covered in your health insurance.
Keep in mind, Obama can’t even manage to allow health insurance to be sold across state lines, like car insurance is, yet now he’s using car insurance as his primary justification for sending people to jail if they don’t buy health coverage.
But you can’t fault him, really. He’s just not very good at this kind of stuff, because it has nothing to do with community organizing.
There there, Barack. Keep trying. Maybe with a little bit more practice, and a little less ego, you’ll start to figure out how to do this tricky executive leadership stuff.
I have a couple of additional points:
5. The purpose of requiring all people to buy health insurance is not to keep them from being a “burden” on everyone else. It is to force the people who are the least likely to become sick (which would cause an outflow of money from the insurance companies) to buy insurance anyway (which would cause an inflow of money to the insurance companies). It may not be wise for such people to avoid buying even limited health insurance, but that is because they are leaving themselves exposed to an unlikely put possible catastrophe. On average, they are the most likely to lose money buy buying health insurance, and that would help insurance companies to cover the people on whom they will have to spend the most money.
6. Mandatory car insurance does not insure the policyholder’s own car. It ensures that if the policyholder’s driving damages another car (or a person), he will have a means of compensating that person or car owner. It covers the possibility that the policyholder will inflict harm on others, not that his own car will need repairs. The equivalent of mandatory car insurance in the healthcare context would be to require that all people have insurance that would compensate anyone who they negligently (or intentionally, I suppose) injure.
Also, President Obama’s health-care proposal from last year, when he was running for President, did not include an individual mandate, did it?
I guess my point #6 is a little like the point #4 from the article, but I think it’s an important detail that the only car insurance that is mandatory is the liability insurance, which prevents a driver from injuring someone else, and then turning out his pockets and saying, “WAH, Wahhhhhh….” It isn’t for the benefit of the driver. It is for the protection of people who he might injure.
Also, if car insurance functioned the way health insurance does, it would cover regular maintenance. And…what would happen to the price of an oil change?
I’m pretty sure Mock and Daisy already posted this, but it’s appropriate here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WnS96NVlMI
Good rhetorical question, and my answer is, “The same thing that would happen to the price of car insurance.” You’re right. I hadn’t even thought about that.
Karl: The inflow of money is going to be a bigger outflow of money for insurance companies because they are getting slapped with mandates as well. Congress is redefining what is a pre-existing condition (in some cases it should be redefined) and forcing them to cover at the same rate those that are simply not profitable. What other business in this country do you pay a flat fee and get unlimited goods and services? People are going to find out you can’t get something for nothing, too bad they won’t find out before it is to our detriment.
Take note that I didn’t factor into the above equation those that will stampede doctors for services because they think it is ‘free’.
but then does this mean that all the slugs out there who are on welfare and refuse to get jobs will be going to jail?
where would they get the money to pay for their health plans?
bad news for welfare queens!
I haven’t read through the (1990 page) bill, but I’m pretty sure that the federal government would subsidize the health insurance for people who cannot afford it, under this plan. (I think that’s one of the major things the Democrats were trying to accomplish through this.)
What bothers me about what this would mean for people who cannot afford health insurance on their own is that they would not just have everyone else’s choice between buying health insurance and going to jail, but between accepting a health-care-context welfare payment and going to jail. People shouldn’t be jailed for refusing a handout.
Laurel: I agree. In case I was unclear, I meant that the goal of the Democrats is to create that inflow (from people who would mostly be paying in) in order to cover the outflow. Instead of directly taxing people and spending that money on healthcare, they want to hide what they are doing by forcing people to pay an insurance company for a product they would not have bought voluntarily, which is a different way of forcing people to supply the money used to serve the objective of the government.
Now, I have yet another problem with Obama’s argument to point out. He says that a penalty is justified when people do not buy health insurance, “forcing you and me and everybody else to subsidize you, you know, there’s a thousand dollar hidden tax that families all across America are — are burdened by because of the fact that people don’t have health insurance, you know, there’s nothing wrong with a penalty.”
I want to be fair to him, but I am having trouble doing that since there is no possible interpretation of this sentence that would make any sense. The second part of his sentence (if it is a sentence) seems to suggest that his supposed “thousand dollar hidden tax” is not a tax of any kind but simply the amount that he believes would be subtracted from the average price of health insurance if largely low-risk people were forced to buy it. If that is what he meant, he either was knowingly making a nonsensical argument or has a profoundly flawed understanding of freedom and economics. (He would also then be overlooking another obvious objection to his argument, that only governments can impose taxes!)
Anyway, in the first part of his sentence, he claims that people who voluntarily do not buy health insurance somehow force others to subsidize them. Whether he is referring to his alleged “thousand dollar hidden tax” or a real subsidy, it is not true. People who choose not to buy health insurance can impose costs on taxpayers if they then use government programs to pay for their treatment when they become sick, but it isn’t their lack of insurance that imposes the cost (and that cost, once imposed, is not hidden).
el pato: “but then does this mean that all the slugs out there who are on welfare and refuse to get jobs will be going to jail?
where would they get the money to pay for their health plans?
bad news for welfare queens!”
Those slugs will never go to jail! Their victim status will be used to make the final last push to government control over aspect of your life. Ironic that they want to fine those that refuse to do for themselves, and yet it was liberals who created the entitlement programs and conditions for those very circumstances to take place. Liberals have a lot of complete and utter gall to complain about those using the system that they put in place.