Strained Analogies

When politicians and partisan supporters of legislation resort to analogies to describe why an intrusive law is legal and warranted citizens should take that as concrete evidence that it is not. Yesterday a federal judge in Virginia ruled that the health insurance mandate in Obamacare is unconstitutional on a suit brought by the attorney general in that state as opposed to allowed under the Commerce clause regulating interstate commerce. This ruling should be indisputable by the fact that the rule mandates that presumptively free citizens purchase health insurance.

Supporters of the mandate have three justifications. Members in congress apparently believe that the federal government can force US citizens to do anything. Big government advocates point to costs associated with uninsured consuming health care resources as justification for it. The intellectually lazy justification, really just a talking point, is that because motorists are required to carry automobile insurance then the federal government has authority to force citizens to purchase health insurance.

Fortunately with the recent ruling by the federal court in Virginia the idea that the feds can say because we said so, citizens will not be forced to purchase a federally outlined commercial product. There are costs associated with the uninsured using a lot of services and is due almost entirely to big government regulation. Because of regulation, no one understands how much health care actually costs and must use services that they might not if given an actual choice. Health care is expensive and it is a good idea for people to subscribe to some sort of health plan but when there is no choice involved because users are forced to get something that is outlined by government making its cost artificially inflated there will be people that forgo it.

The analogous way of seeing things, comparing health insurance to car insurance is just stupid because they are completely different things and the authority and justification for insuring automobiles is different in every way. Because roads are built and maintained by the state, cars which use them must be licensed within the jurisdiction where they are located when not in use. As a condition of use on the roads built by the jurisdiction they are to be insured in order to protect anyone that is harmed by the insured. There is a minimum requirement in auto insurance and the purchaser may customize based on their own needs. If one does not want to purchase auto insurance they can take mass transit, a bicycle or some other way not to drive. The health insurance mandate affects anyone by virtue of existence and forces them to purchase something they may not want designed without their personal interests considered.

The only reason why the mandate exists is to raise concerns about it so that it serves as a step towards government run health care. To implement, taxes will be raised to pay for all health care and it will be buried with all other taxes. Citizens will not have an insurance premium or a mandate; they will have access to something they pay for anyway. It’s just another statist method to force onto the country more government. And the health care system will get worse.