Comments on: Insurance Mandates vs. Insurance Mandates

By: Alan

Alan — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 22:43:23 +0000

Hey, xlrq, I like your style. You are right. I believe Obamacare will be struck down, on the mandatory issue, because of its constitutional problems. Then, again, considering who is on the Supreme Court, who knows? Alan

By: miriam

miriam — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 03:29:29 +0000

X: You don’t know what I think, unless you’re clairvoyant.

I think that passing laws which large numbers of people ignore breeds disrespect for the law. Remember prohibition?

By: tgirsch

tgirsch — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 08:07:36 +0000

God dammit, X, you know it pisses me off when we agree on stuff!

By: Xrlq

Xrlq — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:09:38 +0000

The 15% figure is meaningless, as it’s a national figure, and everything about insurance varies drastically by state. Some states are very good at enforcing financial responsibility laws, while others blow chunks at it. Of course you don’t care, as you seem to think one person’s dubious “right” to endanger others is just as sacred as another’s legitimate right to endanger himself.

By: miriam

miriam — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 02:13:57 +0000

Being dead is drastic, but it would work. What will also work is simply ignoring the law, as the 15 percent who don’t have liability insurance but drive anyway do.

By: Trumwill

Trumwill — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 19:16:14 +0000

What Sigivald said. Further, you can avoid paying auto insurance by not driving altogether. Is the alternative to health insurance being dead?

By: miriam

miriam — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 17:17:59 +0000

I don’t believe in mandatory car insurance either: http://miriamsideas.blogspot.com/2009/11/thousands-dont-have-car-insurance.html

By: Sigivald

Sigivald — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 22:45:29 +0000

Steve: Indeed... but the problem there is that they shouldn't be paying my bills in the first place. If I hit someone with my car, I've damaged him, and it's completely defensible to require I'm capable of paying the costs to risks I voluntarily undertake. If I get sick without insurance, I suggest that the better alternative to "make me buy insurance so that that way someone else won't have to pay" is for them to... just not pay. By which I mean, don't give me free treatment. (Or, alternatively, since that's politically impossible, give free treatment of a limited and basic sort to people who lack insurance, and let charities cover the rest for those who are not without insurance by choice. And pay for it all with taxes, rather than a mandate that I have the coverage the State's technocrats have decided I must have. [For instance, I'm led to believe that in the current plan, I would be required to have a policy that covered addiction treatment. But I'm in very little danger of acquiring an addiction, due to my makeup ... so why should a bureaucrat tell me I have to pay for coverage for it? That is a horribly inefficient way to "save them from paying" for my medical costs. Especially since the only "cost" of me being, say, an alcoholic, would be lower tax revenue... for that matter, I suspect many mandatory-everything proponents might think that producing less tax revenue is something that they should prevent forcefully.])

By: Xrlq

Xrlq — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 00:05:01 +0000

Right, but the constitutional argument is that the federal government is a government of enumerated powers, while the state’s powers are plenary. So any state law is presumptively constitutional unless it violates a specific provision of the constitution, while any federal law is presumptively unconstitutional unless a specific provision of the Constitution authorizes it. So of course it’s constitutional for Massachusetts to force people to buy health insurance; it doesn’t follow that it’s constitutional for the federal government to do likewise.

By: steve

steve — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 23:43:35 +0000

The argument is as auto liability coverage protects us from you, forcing you to buy health insurance protects us from having to pay your (uninsured) medical bills.