Seems like there may be a fundamental US constitutional firewall that will prevent the US from enjoying some form of UHC. The key seems to be that you can’t make an American do something he doesn’t want to do, exept pay taxes.
Can the same be said for primary education ? Most places have a mandatory requirement to attend school until they are 16.
Can you make a case why mandatory health insurance is not constitutional while mandatory primary education is ?
There is no federal mandate for a primary school education.
Also, the feds can make us do more than pay taxes. Witness: the draft.
Yes.
First, there is greater justification for forcing someone to satisfy their obligations to others than there is to force them to to satisfy their obligations to themself. Primary education is mandatory to force a parent to do an adequate job of raising their child. It’s more like CHIP than UHC.
Second, health insurance is far less of an absolute good than primary education, so it is harder to justify making it compulsary. Health insurance is merely a buffer that sits between the consumer and their purchase of health care, which is the product that they actually want to use. Levels of usage of health care are also far more varied between individuals than usage of primary education providers.
Excellent post, although I disagree.
This bit is wrong, though. Well, not wrong, per se, but not a fair comparison. Everyone uses primary education because they have to. When there were no mandatory schooling laws, lots of kids didn’t go to school; they helped out on the farm or in the mine or the factory or wherever.
Do you feel working on the farm or in a mine or factory would adequately prepare a kid for life in today’s society? More to the point, without any kind of guidelines or curriculum to ensure the essentials are covered, would it do so reliably?
Probably no less so than public schools do now, but that’s not the point. The point is that parents do not necessarily care if their children are adequately prepared.
Why would I want to?
Seems to me, barring flawed logic, both may live happily within the construct of the constitution. I’m not sure there’s any legitimate reason I’d want to believe otherwise.
Can you give me one?
I can’t, but others do disagree.
Requiring someone to purchase something from a private company even if they don’t want to is an expansion of government power. Before I support expanding government power, I want to think carefully on possible consequences. For example, what if the next time GM needs bailing out the politicians go ‘Eh, people get pissy when we gave them billions. Lets just require people to purchase GM’s produces. That’ll solve it…’ Or a lot more likely given how US government works, how long do you think it’d take a politician to realize that guaranteeing a customer base for a company in his district is worth dozens of bridges to nowhere or other pork?
If we cheerfully accept the government can and should force everyone to buy from a private company, what are the limits on it? Is there a way to prevent some slimeball in washington from telling a company ‘Give me campaign cash, and I’ll make sure you company becomes filthy rich.’ Or have we just allowed bringing home the bacon to be raised to a whole new level?
And yes, I’m well aware of slippery slope. Still, the entire debate these days seems to be based on the health care bill specifically. I’d like to see legal scholars and politicians at least consider these wider points before charging ahead with an expansion of government power.
Oh, by the way, to answer the OP: There are two differences. The first is that education is run by the government rather than private companies. So requiring education doesn’t involve ‘give your money to this private company over there…’ like the health care bill does. The second is that the education requirement is put on children. It is assumed that children are incapable of making rational choices about their life. Health care, mostly, is about adults. It is assumed that adults are capable of making rational choices about their life. Which is why government regulation ‘for their own good’ is acceptable in one case but may not be in the other.
How do you explain away car insurance? One has to purchase a product from a private company and present that information to a government official in order to register a vehicle with the State? And you make it compulsory? That’s crazy. Many make the argument that you can’t compare car insurance and health insurance because driving car is optional and a choice. Sure, one can make the argument if you’re living in Chicago, New York City, D.C, Philadelphia or any other U.S city with a coherent public transportation, you don’t need a car, but what about the rest of us? If your city doesn’t have a good transportation system then automobiles aren’t a luxury but an necessity.
Guys! It’s federal authority vs state authority.
There is no federal requirement to send your kids to schools. There is no federal requirement for you to purchase car insurance. We leave that to the states. The healthcare mandate is from the federal government.
I’ll bet there is in DC.
People in DC are required to carry auto insurance.
That’s not a federal requirement.
It has to do with the rather unique structure of American federalism. The only powers our national Congress has are those specifically named in Article I, Section Eight. One of those is the power to “regulate Interstate Commerce,” but that has not yet been held to extend to forcing someone to undertake a transaction.
On the other hand, the state legislatures have almost unlimited powers, and could easily force all citizens of that state to purchase health insurance, send their children to school, or hop about on one foot.
I am not sure why it is not a federal requirement. It is a requirement of the federal government in a federal enclave. (Of course, the federal government can exercise state-like authority in a federal enclave.)
Car insurance and health insurance or very different. You do NOT have to buy car insurance. You are required to IF you choose to own a car. But if having to buy car insurance rubs you the wrong way for whatever reason, you do have the choice to not own a car. Obama’s health insurance mandate does not give one the opportunity to not spend a dime on health insurance.
I do believe that health insurance could be provided, but through taxes. There is nothing stopping the government from providing it for everyone through taxes. But Obama swore up and down that his solution was NOT a tax. But when the administration found itself in court, what defense did they raise. Not that they could mandate people buy insurance, but that it was a tax. :rolleyes:
I am solidly against the government mandating that people purchase anything. because once they can mandate one thing, what stops them from mandating Great Idea #2? Or 3?
That’s wrong, John, in effect. The local government and local laws of the District of Columbia exist only at the pleasure of the United States Congress.
Of course, my response is a nitpick of your response to a nitpick intended to demonstrate . . . well, something. I hope that’s all clear. 
That’s nice. I don’t want to make a life for myself surrounded by people, not having bothered getting a vaccination or antibiotic prescription, coughing all over me and spreading their leprosy, polio, or whatever else the fuck they may be carrying.
And I don’t want to go bankrupt because, as a merchant, I cannot sell my wares to the vast swaths of stupid people who never attended grade school so never learned to read or write, so who consequently can’t hold down a job which provides them the disposable income with which they can buy my wares.
Securing your own future is a community endeavor. Don’t believe me? Go try to secure your future in the middle of no where, 500 miles from the nearest human.
No. DC has a mayor and a “city” council. They’ve had that since 1973. They legalized SSM. Can we say that the federal government legalized SSM?
So it might be correct to say that the federal government didn’t veto the requirement (which they could do). but they didn’t originate the requirement.
The problem I had with the bill was it wasn’t Universal Health Care but sold as such. It left too many people out. And it was done as a compromise. UHC must include everyone to be effective. The moment you leave people out you run into problems.
As for the original argument, a basic education is needed for societal advancement. I went into a state of Illinois program for ex-cons. I’m not an ex-con but they had open places so they let me attend. I thought since I’ve been on temp jobs for three years it’d help me. It didn’t but the scary part was almost none of them could read and write.
They couldn’t fill out a job application. They were nice people, at least to me they were, but how far in life are you gonna get when you can’t fill out a job application, used by McDonalds.
It blows my mind in this day and age these people can’t read and write enough to fill out an application. And get his, of the 20 people in the classroom 19 (myself and 18 others) were graduates of high school.
I ask you, how do you graduate high school and not have the ability to fill out a job applicatation? But these people did it.
So merely requiring schooling isn’t even a help.