The positive comparison says, yes, it's OK to require people to buy health insurance--we require them to buy auto insurance, don't we?
Republican Attorneys General planning lawsuits are featuring this response: you aren't required to buy a car, that's a choice. So, if you choose to buy a car you can be required to have insurance, to protect others from the cost of accidents you may cause. But with health care, they say, the government is directly requiring that people purchase a product and that's what makes it different.
Leave it to the experts to decide how this plays out legally--state vs. federal jurisdiction, interstate commerce, whatever the technical issues are. But as a matter of sheer logic there's this:
Someday you will get sick or injured. That's not an option. It will happen. And if you are not insured other people will have to pay for your care. So the real analogy with auto insurance is this: you are driving a car from the day you are born.
Therefore, the government will establish the rate Accountants can charge and all who files taxes in the U.S. must hire the Accountant at the rate the government has set. In addition, to save money, all tax forms must be filed electronically, which requires a computer, online access, etc. Therefore, the government wll establish the cost of a computer and online access and everyone must purchase the computer and pay the rate for access.
Therefore, the government must set the hourly rate attorneys can charge, and all people living in the U.S. must go to an Attorney to set up a Will/Trust, and on an annual basis will go to the Attorney to review the Will/Trust.
http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/reuters_is_excellent_in_diggin.php
and, that you can post a bond instead of getting auto insurance?
So, paying the insurance, and their profit, is a convenience rather than an absolute requirement?
and, that if you don't get auto insurance you just have to stop driving? It's optional. Unlike living?
and, that, unlike auto insurance, with healthcare insurance the IRS will fine you, the FBI will pursue you, and the federal courts will jail you if you don't pay?
And, if this paying insurance companies is such a great idea, why didn't the bill either allow competition by removing the exemption from anti-trust legislation? Or, since they've allowed them to maintain an effective monopoly with guaranteed customers (unlike auto insurance companies) regulate them like we do public utilities?
Instead, it just looks like a forced transfer of money from the average taxpayer to the obscene salaries of big healthcare insurance company executives with no real controls over their behavior ($100m for CEO of Cigna?) enforced by the IRS, FBI and Federal Courts.
This bill extends the personal wealth and political power of government officials and part of the ruling class (healthcare insurance executives), via the forced taking of individual funds by the government at the expense of the wider population without even the pretense of honest service for the 20% - 30% profits they are allowed (compared to 15% required rate of return on utilities).
but in the meantime we all will consume health care, we need to plan for the this fact. not planning is not a plan and there are those who simply say "no" to everything except angry teabaggery.
d
"and, that, unlike auto insurance, with health care insurance the IRS will fine you, the FBI will pursue you, and the federal courts will jail you if you don't pay?"
May I suggest you download the bill? It's about 3 meg of PDF. Go to around page 335. There, in the law as passed, you find that yes, there is a penalty, assessed by the IRS. Thereafter, however, there is, by explicit language, not only a prohibition against assessing criminal penalties, there is a prohibition against liens or levies.
That is another difference, then. Driving without insurance is a criminal matter. Not having health insurance, under this bill, is not.
The point is there is no mandate to buy private insurance. It is a choice between publicly funded minimal care and privately funded comprehensive care. Nothing unconstitutional about it.
But what publicly funded minimal care has been introduced in the legislation? It sounds sort of like a "public option," which I thought Obama said the other day "couldn't get it through Congress."
Maybe you can tell, I've been wanting a strong public option. And if we get one, your logic is right and all the challenges are moot.... but I thought I was paying close attention and haven't heard any breakthrough public option miracles.