Category: Individual Mandate

Broccoli – Doctors for America

Broccoli – Doctors for America:

The health care market is unlike any other market because health care costs are unpredictable and are not meaningfully bounded on the upside. Break an arm and your costs could be in thousands of dollars. Have a heart attack and you’re in the tens of thousands of dollars. Get cancer and you could enter the hundreds of thousands of dollars category. There’s no way to prepare for such illnesses and their costs. That’s why health insurance exists, to smooth out these costs over a lifetime and to pool our resources to help those with catastrophic costs to pay for them. The purpose of mandating the purchase of health insurance is to have everyone pay into a system that they will eventually use. Equating broccoli and health insurance is specious and a sign of bad faith on the part of those making that argument. As far as I know, nobody has died because they couldn’t get their hands on some broccoli.

When broccoli is 1/6th of the economy of the nation, give me a holler. Maybe then it should be regulated.

In the meantime, what we are hearing is a deliberately misleading meme about ‘limiting principles,” AKA, “where do we draw the line?” My answer is that we don’t draw the line at health care, a fundamental human need that now accounts for one sixth of all economic activity in the US. This is clearly NOT where to draw the line. We can argue about where TO draw the line when the Federal Government tries to mandate burial insurance or some other completely random pseudo-analogy thought up by Fox News and fellow travelers.

The ACP Advocate Blog by Bob Doherty: Irony

The ACP Advocate Blog by Bob Doherty: Irony

Good piece on the GOPs history of advocating for an individual mandate – until Democrats suported it:

In 1990, the conservative Heritage Foundation developed a plan for universal coverage that described the individual mandate as a “social contract” between the government and individuals:“Under this social contract, the federal government would agree to make it financially possible, through refund able tax benefits or in some cases by providing access to public-sector health programs, for every American family to purchase at least a basic package of, including catastrophic insurance. In return, government would require, by law every head of household to acquire at least a basic health plan for his or her family.”
The individual mandate was then incorporated into bills proposed by GOP stalwarts Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Chuck Grassley (R-IO) as an alternative to “Hillary Care.” It later became a lynchpin of the Massachusetts health reform plan championed by then governor (and likely 2012 presidential candidate) Mitt Romney (R-MA).
That was then, this is now.
The Heritage Foundation now argues that the individual mandate is “unprecedented” and “unconstitutional”- conveniently ignoring its own past ownership of the idea. A few days ago, Senator Hatch hailed the Virginia judge’s decision to overturn the individual mandate as “a great day for liberty. Congress must obey the Constitution rather than make it up as we go along. Liberty limits on government, and today those limits have been upheld.”

The Militia Act of 1792

The Militia Act of 1792:

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That each and every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective States, resident therein, who is or shall be of age of eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years (except as is herein after excepted) shall severally and respectively be enrolled in the militia, by the Captain or Commanding Officer of the company, within whose bounds such citizen shall reside, and that within twelve months after the passing of this Act. And it shall at all time hereafter be the duty of every such Captain or Commanding Officer of a company, to enroll every such citizen as aforesaid, and also those who shall, from time to time, arrive at the age of 18 years, or being at the age of 18 years, and under the age of 45 years (except as before excepted) shall come to reside within his bounds; and shall without delay notify such citizen of the said enrollment, by the proper non-commissioned Officer of the company, by whom such notice may be proved. That every citizen, so enrolled and notified, shall, within six months thereafter, provide himself with a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack, a pouch, with a box therein, to contain not less than twenty four cartridges, suited to the bore of his musket or firelock, each cartridge to contain a proper quantity of powder and ball; or with a good rifle, knapsack, shot-pouch, and powder-horn, twenty balls suited to the bore of his rifle, and a quarter of a pound of powder; and shall appear so armed, accoutred and provided, when called out to exercise or into service, except, that when called out on company days to exercise only, he may appear without a knapsack.

Thanks to Ezra Klein, Joe Conason and others for pointing this out!