Days of Change

First, Congress’s authority in passing the law rests on an elementary syllogism: You don’t have to drive, but if you do, the government can make you buy insurance. The logical structure at work here is that if you are going to do something (drive, for example), the government can make you purchase a commercial product (insurance, for example), so long as it has a good reason for doing so (making sure you can pay for any damage you do). That logic is obviously satisfied in the health-care context. You are going to use medical care, so the government can make you buy insurance in order to make sure you can pay for it. Liberty, like every other human and constitutional right, is not absolute. Under some circumstances, it can be regulated.

Which leads to the second point: critics of the health-care law say the only reason the rest of us have to pay for medical services used by people who have no money is that laws require hospitals to treat people who come in for emergencies regardless of their ability to pay. In other words, the critics say, the only reason there is a social cost—the only reason the syllogism works—is because of the underlying laws requiring hospitals to treat the poor.

First, he’s lying about car insurance. The federal government cannot require drivers to buy insurance because of the 10th Amendment. He just made the case for dropping the individual mandate, but let’s move on. State governments have more power to regulate people because citizens are able to leave the3 damn state if they don’t like it. Look at all the blue states that lost population and the red states that gained. If the federal government decides to regulate commerce (like prohibition) an American has lost a freedom. So Mitt Romney is free to institute an individual mandate and have the people of his state complain about how much more expensive insurance is, but Obama can’t do the same. New Hampshire doesn’t require insurance for drivers, by the way.

This other argument about hospitals and people with no insurance is frankly bullshit. First of all, going back to the failed car insurance example, most states only mandate that drivers have insurance against causing injury to others. You have car insurance in case you smash-up someone’s car, not to repair your own car. Health insurance is only for taking care of your personal problems. The only way it becomes an issue to others is by virtue of this claim by liberals that people who have no insurance and get treated at emergency rooms are freeloaders.

The people whose only option is to be treated for serious conditions at an ER are usually the working poor. People on public assistance are frequently provided with “health care” as an insurance policy they don’t pay into. I used to write about this all the time in another life. In New York, If you made minimum wage, you would have to pay about 40% of your net income for their insurance for the working poor. If you were on food stamps, it was $0. So, if you are the working poor and you are so sick that you need to go to an ER, you can expect to be slapped with a bill larger than your quarterly income. It is a bill larger, in fact, than someone with insurance would be charged. If you own a home, a lien will go against it. If you are in debt, you may need to declare bankruptcy to remove it.

Now, according to liberals, the low-income working class are deadbeats. Their care is more expensive and puts a drain on the system. Wait a second. There’s something up at the beginning of the post. There it is. Under Obamacare, insurance companies will have to write policies for people with preexisting conditions. Gee, those people also have the most expensive care and are a significant drain on the system. So people who don’t go to doctors except in emergencies are bad, but people who go to doctors frequently are a protected class. That makes sense. Obamcare is a jobs program. Punish people who don’t pay for doctors often enough, reward people who go often and set up another business of health care exchanges for when insurance rates have to go up for deadbeats the chronically ill.

I can definitely see how this will be revenue neutral. Can we impeach bloggers?