Here Come Health Insurance Mandates

This was inevitable as every single policy expert I've ever read says it is impossible to have "half" a national health insurance plan. It's everybody in or the plan will fail. Obama ran on a platform that stopped well short of forcing everyone into an insurance pool. When queried about that he claimed that health care costs would come down because insurance premiums would be cheaper.

This is the harsh reality: The first item for business before the Congress will probably be this plan being worked up by Max Baucus, chairman of the Finance Committee and one of the most senior Democrats in the Senate.

"There is one important difference between the initiative coming from Montana Democratic Sen. Max Baucus and the plan Mr. Obama laid out during his presidential campaign: Mr. Baucus would require all Americans to have health insurance..."

... if you mandate coverage - if you tell every single American they must have health insurance - there must be an enforcement mechanism so that people don't get away with not paying their "fair share." The only logical entity who is equipped to carry out such a task is the IRS who will almost certainly be empowered to seize your property - most likely any tax refund you might have coming - and even send you a bill for what is due the same way they send bills for taxes owed... [snip]

What will start out costing $100 billion or so will skyrocket. Also skyrocketing will be the number of citizens who will be eligible for subsidies. Soon, virtually the entire health insurance system will be subsidized to one degree or another. And with the government putting that much into health insurance, it logically follows that they are going to want a bigger say in divvying up health care resources.

You can bet if they're paying for it, they are going to want to horn in on personal decisions made by citizens in consultation with their doctors. That would be the end of private health care and the beginning of the nightmare that European countries are experiencing as they pick and choose who gets care and who doesn't, who lives, and who dies...

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