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Can the government force you to buy insurance?

By: halsted (Diary)  |  October 23rd, 2009 at 12:51 AM  | 

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I was commenting on the health care issue in a discussion about the “right” to health care. A rhetorical question I ask is whether the government is allowed by the Constitution to force individuals to purchase health insurance?

Liberals almost always knee-jerk and state that the government requires auto insurance for all drivers. It is an apples/oranges comparison. You have no right to drive. You are granted the privilege to drive if you meet certain criteria. You must have adequate vision, demonstrate knowledge of traffic laws, and pass a practical operator’s test. Additionally, you have to have liability insurance in case you injure someone else or their property. You don’t have to have insurance against your own losses (collision/comprehensive). If you don’t meet those criteria, you do not attain the privilege.

I would argue that you do have a right to be alive and that the right is actually stated explicitly in the Declaration of Independence. The Democrats want to require everyone to purchase health insurance. Are individuals required to purchase insurance because they are alive? Is the penalty for not buying into the system forfeiture of your right to live? I am trying to think of anything that the Constitution requires any citizen to purchase. Answer: There is nothing. Since there is no way to require people to buy health insurance and have it pass a constitutional challenge, the Democrats want to get around this by paying for the entire system requiring health care coverage with tax revenues. Taxes are allowed to be collected by the Constitution. That is the reason that the Democrats want the “public option”.  If the Democrats attempt to force people to buy insurance on the market, they will lose in the Supreme Court. Therefore, they want a single payer system which they can control. Therefore, once again, this whole debate is exposed as a health care reform in name only. Controlling health care reimbursement allows the camel’s nose into every tent.

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  • Menlo

    The Democrats don’t want single payer because they know they would have to join the system. Despite their rhetoric to the contrary, they are actually on the side of the big insurance companies (who, in case you didn’t know, love the party of big government).

    These proposals they are considering will be a taxpayer gift to the health insurance oligopoly. The “public option” doesn’t matter when the government is still dictating the only plans that can be offered, determining how much those plans will cost, and subsidizing those plans. If a “public option” is enacted, people likely won’t choose it, especially since there is an income cap after which the government will pay for “private” plans. Who would want the stigma of being on a “public plan?”

    I’m with you on the individual mandate. Eerily, the government most certainly does and long has institutionalized people deemed a danger to themselves, and they will very likely take a doctor’s word for it in the case of a health issue. The UK has already set up “fat camps” and “skinny camps” to send school children who are out of the normal weight range.

    I could easily back a mandate that only penalized people who sought care for which they could not pay at the time of service. That would be too sensible for Congress though.

    With that in mind, at least calling it a tax would be more in line with the Constitution. Recall that Obama claimed this was NOT a “tax.” He didn’t seem to like it when the reporter got out a dictionary.

  • acat

    It’s about coercive power. Specifically, concentrating coercive power in the hands of the government, and thus the Democrat Party.

    “Pay your taxes or the old people die”.
    “Pay your taxes or the babies die”.

    Do you think they won’t go here?

    “Pay your taxes or the old people starve”. – they went *there* during Reagan’s era.

    The Dem motis operandi is, when in power, to create byzantine bureaucracies to administer their power structure, bureaucracies that statist Repubs foolishly try to use for good, despite the calls from their fiscal-conservative Repub allies to destroy, erm, de-fund them. When, for example, was the last Lib-dominated federal agency actually dismantled?

    Once out of power, the Dem motis operandi becomes to defend, by inches, the gains they’ve made – and to cast the Repubs of all stripes as evil, using the old, the young, the poor, etc. as human shields – to be discarded later on.

    This is the enemy. Knowing the enemy is the first step to defeating the enemy.

    Mew

  • halsted

    The Politburo never lives at the same standard as the folks. Our Congress exempts themselves from all regulations. It is a tenet of the incredibly rich liberals that they need to “mother” the huddled masses but they will never live the same way.