According to Madame Speaker, your existence as a person living within the United States is enough reason for the heavy hand of the state to handcuff you, haul you into court, find you guilty and sentence you to prison unless you purchase this product deemed essential by her and her cronies in Washington.
h/t to Hot Air
Health care for all sounds like a wonderful idea, and indeed it is. However, the reality is that any program run by or required by the state carries with it the threat of force in its enforcement. Scripture says it best, “the power does not bear the sword in vain,” and indeed it does not. There is quite a bit of difference in incentivizing socially desirable behavior (like marriage or home ownership or yes, owning health insurance) and enacting punitive measures if one fails to comply with what someone, somewhere deems to be in your best interest.
While libertarians and some conservatives might balk at the notion of the state doing anything to encourage certain behaviors through the tax code, I am willing to concede that some socially beneficially aims might be rightfully considered, and in any event, there is no punishment for those who do not comply. This is why our tax code encourages, through the deductibility of donations to religious and charitable organizations, philanthropy. Such organizations, religious or otherwise, have proven themselves again and again to be more than capable of delivering at far lower cost and with far greater efficiency, the types of services that liberals insist we need. It would be quite simple (and probably cheaper) for all the bleeding heart liberals who are distressed by the lack of adequate health care coverage to simply band together and create a health care non-profit that would cover the cost of care for the uninsured, for illegal immigrants, and for gender dysmorphic double transsexuals. They could even pay for abortion on demand if they wanted to!!
However this type of giving is not preferred by statists because the individual retains control of his money, as do the organizations to which he gives. And it certainly isn’t preferred by liberals, who could solve the problem all on their own. They prefer rather to mandate “compassion” through the tax code by compelling everyone else to foot the bill for that which they have decided is necessary. And if you don’t agree, or don’t want to comply, well then, you are an enemy of the people and prison is the place for you. Kind of like those kulaks who selfishly horded grain to feed themselves and their families rather than turning it over to the state…
The Truth in Black and Right 
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She never answered the question. She walked around it really well though.
At a basic level this is trying to fix a problem they created. It was the Government that mandated that a Hospital couldn’t turn someone away that couldn’t afford to be there, then they get annoyed that they have to compensate the hospital, then they force us to compensate the Government for compensating the hospital. The thing is this will not fix the problem of the uninsured showing up at the hospital since illegal immigrants will still be doing it.
I’m not saying we should turn people who are dying away but we should be making them find away to pay for their own debts and take charge of their own lives. More people would have their own insurance if we stopped only giving tax breaks to people who get it through their workplace and had real Tort Reform so ambulance chasing lawyers couldn’t spend all their time trying to scam hospitals and insurance companies out of billions of dollars. A Doctors malpractice insurance every year costs more than the average middle class income. John Edwards millions off of lying to a jury, he even went so far as claiming he could talk to a baby in the womb. The jury bought it and took millions from those “heartless” doctors and lined Edwards pockets.
People think insurance companies are trying to scam people, yet no one cares about the fact that everyone is trying to scam the insurance companies and the hospitals and that is the real reason everything is so expensive.
Hello Pot, I’m Mr. Kettle.
If we are lucky it will not pass the Senate.
U.S. to open Guantanamo branch in Chicago to house mandatory Government Health Care violators .
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New Guantanamo Chicago branch to be called Chitmo.
Anyone that has ever had to spend any time in Chicago would rather be in Gitmo, even Iraq is safer than Chicago.
I lived 40 years in Chicago. During that time I saw Chicago go from a first class manufacturing city to a third world slum. Hospitals and the rest of our country have followed the same path. You be a scaredycat, so of course you are not safe.
This whole bill is a nightmare. The consequences of how the policies will all trickle down are pretty radical. We haven’t even begun to explore them all. State run medicaid for example, something poor people currently get is to be expanded to cover more people. Well, most states have a medicare recapture program, they take people’s property to pay themselves back. Depending where you live, this happens when you sell a home or go into a nursing home or win a personal injury suit. The state has a lien against your property if you’ve used their medicaid . We’ve been doing this to our elderly for a long time, medicare from SS doesn’t pay for long term nursing home care, so state medicaid kicks in. When you pass away the state then takes a percentage of your estate, usually the bulk of the sale of your home if you’re poor. So now we’re going to force people with even more money on state run medicaid and most of them are going to have no idea that they’re basically hocking their assets over to the state.
We go back five yrs where I live, so if you sell a home or win the lottery within five yrs of having medicaid, you are expected to pay the state back. And you’re going to have no choice in the matter, you will basically be forced to put your assets up as collateral in return for mandatory government insurance.
TBC,
This is a fascinating subject. Actually our friend Marque’s Letters wrote about the tax aspect of this a while back. His position, which I now agree with, is that this is not a tax. In fact, he goes so far as to note that there is no constitutional vehicle for this type of “mandatory commerce” anywhere in the constitution. It is a great piece of work if you have not read it. Here is a link:
Your point taken however, this is really equivalent to a “life tax” and there is no precedent for such a thing in American history. Many try to equate it to Automotive liability insurance but these are two different things. Specifically, you do not have to have automobile liability insurance – you only need it if you choose to have a driver’s license.
Actually you don’t need to have liability insurance if you have a license; only if you operate a motor vehicle, and even then many states require you to have insurance or “proof of financial responsibility” which means you could self insure. Also as far as liability insurance goes, many people don’t even realize the limitations of those policies because they rarely have accidents with severe damages. The most common policy won’t pay out more than $100,000 per person after which the injured party can still sue you for damages. Many people don’t realize this. Auto insurance has a national market but is still regulated on the state level, and yes you pay more for having a higher risk (any parent with teen aged sons knows this), and no you can’t get insurance for a “pre-existing condition” like buying a policy because you just totaled someone else’s car and you want the insurance to cover it.
Absolutely right, TBC. And thanks for the shout-out, Chuck. Marque’s Letters has a series of posts on this subject, which freaks me out more than anything else we’ve seen from this Administration, and I’m sure there will be more. I also strongly recommend the following article, which appeared in Forbes online today: http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/17/obamacare-health-democrats-republicans-opinions-columnists-shikha-dalmia.html
I am a reporter working on story for USA Today looking to interview people without health insurance what they would do if the govt mandates having health coverage. Contact me at pgalewitz@kff.org. Thanks