Correct me if I’m wrong, but the #1 criticism of Obamacare I hear from the right is that it’s unconstitutional, appalling, deplorable, irrehensible, sinful, etc. to require people to purchase health care.
Doesn’t most of working class America (middle and upper) already buy health care insurance from their employers? That is, if you have a job, are somewhat financially responsible, have a home and/or family, odds are you probably puchase health insurance?
They only people I know who don’t buy health insurance are people who can’t afford it. The minimum wage worker bees who the GOP doesn’t really care about anyway. Or they’re the kind of people who live paycheck-to-paycheck and rather spend their extra few dollars on beer, cigarettes, or at the casino.
Is the entire GOP on a march to defend this demographic of people?
WHO exactly are they sticking up for in their massive fight against mandated purchasing of health insurance?
Leaving aside the large portion of “the right” who simply oppose anything Obama does, if you think something is unconstitutional, why would it matter who the people are that you are defending? Does it bother you when the ACLU defends the right of Neo Nazis to march in Jewish neighborhoods?
Who marches in favor of Hitler in Jewish neighborhoods and why is the left so aggressively defending them?
The other group that doesn’t buy health insurance is healthy young people, some of whom live paycheck to paycheck and spend their money on beer and cigarettes and lotto ticktes, but some of whom don’t. That’s the big reason there’s a mandate: if you make the health insurance industry cover people who are already sick and have high medical expenses, their costs are going to go way up. The mandate allows them to collect more money from the healthy young people who don’t need as much medical care.
The right doesn’t care much about these people because they don’t vote all that much and when they do, they vote Democrat. But they’re not the intended audience, and if you believe they’re making this argument on principle, it doesn’t matter.
For several reasons
- They are against Obama and anything he proposes they want to see fail for political reasons.
- They are against any form of public health care because they see it as a slippery slope to a nationalized health care which would reduce the amount of money flowing from the pockets of the general populace into the pockets of well heeled share holders.
- If you are going to make Health Insurance mandatory, you will have to subsidize it in some way so that the poor can afford it. While if it isn’t mandatory then the poor you can just leave them to live or die on their own devices.
- There is a general feeling that the government meddling in the economic affairs of individuals is inherently bad, since it should restrict itself to social meddling.
If the government has to spend so much of its resourced making sure everyone buys medical insurance, how can they make sure that gays aren’t getting married all over the place?
The Federal government (IMHO, and to be decided by SCOTUS) does not have the power to force me to purchase a private product like health insurance. My state, on the other hand, does have that power. As a matter of fact, I wonder why Massachusetts (with less than 6% uninsured now thanks to RomneyCare/HeritageCare) did not kick off more states trying the same.
I did not buy health insurance for 2 years. I was an independent stock broker with a negative net worth (used car vs student loans). I was healthy, and saw no reason to pay every month to support someone else’s bad habits.
ObamaCare, with its exceptions, its false payoffs (THIS time we will cut the doctor’s pay! Really!), and other signs of a poorly negotiated bill needs to be scrapped. Instead, each state should be encouraged to find a solution that fits their state. If there are such amazing advantages to offering public health care, we should see businesses flocking to those states offering a state level plan, and those states who don’t have a system losing companies left and right.
Because you shouldn’t be forced to buy health insurance simply because you exist. I think that’s a pretty damn good reason.
In my view, the opposition rests on two grounds: the slippery slope belief that this is a first step towards a nationalized system, and on the genuine belief that this mechanism is unconstitutional. It’s not driven by what demographics may, or may not, benefit.
Yet people seem to inherently understand that it’s okay, because of the greater good, to mandate people to purchase car insurance.
It does seem a disconnect I don’t really understand. Everyone shares the cost of the uninsured, car or health. But with health, if you’re uninsured and so don’t get treatment when you first have symptoms, you end up costing the system (and taxpayers) way, way more to treat once your condition reaches the critical care stage.
I don’t understand it either.
No one wants socialized medicine, because they may have to pay for someone else. Yet they pay school and road taxes, whether they have a car or a child in school. They pay for libraries, fire services, police services, whether they ever use them, or not. Because it serves the greater good. No one sees this as government overstepping it’s bounds, or a constitutional issue. Weird.
I can’t understand it at all. I think it’s fear of ‘the socialism’,at the same time having gone to ‘socialized’ public schools, driving on ‘socially’ purchased roads, libraries, police and fire services etc.
It’s a baffler.
I think it’s the large amount of money involved, and the fact that corporations are currently making it.
If schools were privately owned by a few corporations and were making billions upon billions of dollars per year… it would be really really hard to convince folks that public schools would make sense, even if it would dramatically cut costs to the nation.
Likewise with roads - if all roads were private toll roads, raking in billions for corporations - there would be no way in hell a public road would ever be built, even if it would cost everyone much less.
I don’t like the idea of being forced to do something either. However, I look at this mechanism in the same way that I look at seat belt requirements or helmet laws. That is, there is a potential societal cost involved when things go awry. With seat belts, helmets and health insurance, society does not have the means, nor does it have the callousness, to adopt a “you pays your money you takes your chances” kind of attitude.
I like that we are not yet callous enough to leave someone with head trauma to go untreated even if they created the situation by not wearing a helmet, and that we continue to be appalled when we hear stories about ailing people being dumped on the street.
I thus see these kind of things as trade offs in the balance between personal liberties and a decent society.
Folks not supporting Health Care coverage for all are without a doubt short-sighted. They are the folks who look at today vs just a few years into the future to see what could happen if one of those poor people or young healthy urban professionals travels somewhere or contracts something that makes them just a bit sick while it incubates in them and because they have no health coverage choose not to go to see a Doctor.
By the time they do see a Doctor, they may have already infected and spread it (a serious virus) all over in an Airplane, a Train or an office building. Said Virus of course does not discriminate between folks with Insurance Coverage and without… nor does it matter if one is rich or poor.
We can mandate that folks carry insurance to drive a car on our roads, but cannot mandate that they carry insurance coverage for a unit body that can quickly incubate the next major mass killer of mankind.
The concern I would have with a state by state system is that uninsured or uninsurable people with per-existing conditions would flock to those states that provided a means for them to get insurance. Making the programs unstable. That said, I don’t recall this happening in Massachusetts so maybe I’m wrong.
The main difference is that the case of car insurance it is directly in my best interest that everyone else on the roads is insured so that someone of them runs into me I will be paid. With health insurance although there is an overall increase in hospital expenses due to the uninsured, there is not a situation where I am harmed directly by another’s lack of insurance.
Also the car insurance requirement is long established and so not seen as a new restriction on personal rights. It is not clear that a mandatory car insurance requirement would pass in today political climate. Similarly I think that 20 years from now if the health care act doesn’t get dismantled, people will see mandatory health insurance as no big deal and forget that there was ever a controversy.
Well probably that’s the objection which they think they can get the most traction out of. I doubt it’s their actual main objection.
The auto insurance analogy is flawed.
1 - The FEDERAL government does not require auto insurance.
2 - I do NOT have to buy auto insurance for cars I keep on my property (I don’t ensure a ranch truck of mine - not worth it, and it never leaves the ranch).
3 - I do not have to buy insurance for myself, I only have to have insurance to cover the costs of someone ELSE in case I am liable.
4 - I can forego insurance and just be bonded
We have gone over this several times. You only need to buy car insurance if you wish to drive on the public roads. Obamacare wants to force you to buy health insurance if you breathe the public air.
The problem is that Obama wanted to make sure the insurance companies couldn’t turn anyone down. This creates the perverse incentive of waiting until you need health insurance before applying, thus saving money on premiums. The idea was “filling out the forms in the ambulance”. Thus he decided to mandate that anyone who he thought could afford it had to buy health insurance. He swore up and down that the money you were penalized if you didn’t wasn’t a tax (although it is supposed to go to buy health insurance for those who can’t afford it). Currently his lawyers are swearing up and down that it is a tax, and that the taxing authority of Congress means they can compel citizens to buy a commercial product. So I guess he was lying about that too.
He just didn’t think Obamacare thru very well, and lacks the legislative experience to get a bill thru Congress.
Regards,
Shodan
I don’t know - but that is a great question. I do know (heard it from Mitt himself at a speaking event t Heritage) that they reduced the uninsured problem by putting in computers in all ERs so that they could sign people up for Medicare when they checked in (most of the uninsured were Medicare eligible).
5 - I am not required to buy car insurance if I choose not to own a car.
So the federal government has no precedent for making citizens pay money for services that may only benefit them indirectly?
I’m betting he won’t come back to answer that one.