When I responded to Obama’s Health Care Speech I said the following about the potential inclusion of an individual mandate in whatever health care overhaul bill is eventually debated in Congress:
In a nod to the necessity of compromise and political expediency (I do have a pragmatic bone in my body – somewhere) I will keep it out of the non-starter category and say that if it is extremely limited, as liability-only car insurance is, I could accept an individual mandate.
Scott challenged me on that position and I defended it as politically expedient. Now that I have had more time to think about it I believe that I can conclusively demonstrate why the president wanted to rush the health care legislation through before the August recess. His reason was that he understood that the longer people have to process the issue the more people will realize how little government can legitimately do to address this issue and how dangerous it is to allow Congress to employ tools that are not legitimately theirs in order to “fix the system.”
Even I, a very conservative citizen, was willing to consider an individual mandate in the interest of political expediency. Let’s explore the inevitable long-term damage of allowing Congress to use this tool that I even admitted at the time to be extra-Constitutional.
My initial thinking was that an extremely limited mandate would be bearable – what I failed to consider was that no matter what the initial limitations might be allowing such a mandate is nothing less than offering a toe-hold for Congress to expand the mandate in the future.
I refuse to claim that the current members of Congress have a sinister desire to force me to buy and expensive insurance policy that exceeds the needs of some like me who lives a very healthy lifestyle and plans ahead for any predictable medical expenses. (I’m referring to Congress as a body here – I make no claims about any given individual member.) On the other hand, I also refuse to trust that all future members of Congress will lack any such sinister motives – even during the limited span of my own lifetime. Even if I were so trusting it takes no more than a cursory glance at history to determine conclusively that government regulations have an overwhelming tendency to creep in only one direction – the direction of becoming ever more invasive.
When my brain finally kicked in to remind me of this I came to two absolute conclusions. First, no individual mandate, no matter how limited is acceptable in the health care bills. Even if the mandate were that all adults must sign a contract stating that they would pay the first $10,000 of any medical expenses they incur unless they have private insurance with a lower deductible the mandate would be outside the Constitutional authority of Congress and would be too dangerous to support in any bill. Second, there are two relevant definitions of “fix” in politics – one is fix as a noun:
a. The act of adjusting, correcting, or repairing.
b. Informal Something that repairs or restores; a solution.
The other is fix as a verb:
To influence the outcome or actions of by improper or unlawful means.
The noun is that one that politicians usually think they mean and always want citizens to think they are pursuing. The verb is generally more applicable to what they are doing even if they have the best of intentions.
Leave a Reply