Many people are still not sold on the individual mandate portion of President Obama's signature healthcare reform bill. Carl Hiaasen of The Miami Herald has presented a quite unique arguement for the individual mandate and its constitutionality.
More after the fold...
In Mr. Hiaasen's editorial today, he brings up the fact that the state of Florida, among others, requires drivers to carry valid auto insurance. The state will not renew your auto tag without current, valid proof of insurance. Failure to possess valid insurance will be prosecuted by a traffic violation and suspension of your driver's license.
Currently, the federal appeals court in Atlanta is debating the constitutionality of the individual mandate.
Government, the opponents cry, cannot compel citizens to pay for products such as insurance policies.
If that is true, and upheld by the court system, then how can any state government mandate that anyone is required by law to purchase any form of insurance? Nobody is challenging the "constitutionality" of being required to purchase auto insurance, so why all the fuss about health insurance? This seems to be a case of having your cake and eating it too. This is nothing more than government mandating that you must have insurance on your vehicle, or face fines and penalties if you do not. What is the difference between HCR's individual mandate and a state government mandating that you are required to have auto insurance? Absolutely no difference at all.
These mandates keep insurance costs down. As Mr. Hiaasen points out,
Individual home and auto policies are already brutally overpriced, but they would be astronomical if the costs weren’t mandatorily spread among all consumers.
It’s true that thousands of Floridians still drive around with no car insurance, but millions would take the same road if it became legal. Meanwhile, drivers who responsibly purchased liability policies would see their premiums shoot through the roof, as they got stuck with subsidizing everyone else.
Obviously, these mandates keep insurance costs down by spreading the overall costs over a wide number of people. Likewise, the individual mandate in HCR would help keep health insurance costs down as the vast majority of people would be covered by health insurance. Its not a perfect plan, but it is a far cry better than what we have today.
Its amazing that the denizens of Teabaggerstan do not see a conflict with these two philosophies; amazing but not surprising.
Anyway, give the article a read and, if you find it worthy, pass it along to your Senator and Representatives and put the heat on them to stop playing with HCR and get onto more important priorities like rebuilding our infrastructure (thereby creating jobs, increasing tax revenues, etc).