Opponents of new health care legislation have chosen to carry on their opposition to it based on its provision for an individual mandate which would require that every American have health insurance. They say it is unconstitutional to force Americans to do anything they don't want to do.
But wait, aren't the ones who are complaining loudest about the mandate that everyone should have to carry health insurance the ones who all already have health insurance? Why would they complain about being told that they must continue to do something they are already doing voluntarily? It is hard to see how this would upset them.
The Universal Allowance
It seems there are mandates and then there are mandates.
Take a simple one that most states have enacted - seat belt laws. Although in case of an automobile accident seat belts have proven effective in limiting death and injury, to save themselves slight inconvenience many Americans are not inclined to use seat belts. So to save lives laws were passed that seat belt must be worn or risk a fine.
OK, I admit I'm not one who wore seat belts regularly or voluntarily. This is probably due to a superstition on my part to not want to think of myself getting involved in a critical traffic accident lest I subconsciously will it into being. So when I wear a seat belt it is more to avoid a ticket than any other reason. I could choose to be livid at this intrusive, nanny state act but choose not to be merely because upon calm reflection I realize that that the state is being far more rational on this issue than am I.
Yet it's hard to imagine someone who previously always wore a seat belt refusing to do so any longer merely because someone told them they had to and would fine them if they didn't. Perhaps it's the inner teenager at work in those who rail against the health care mandate. Perhaps they are afraid they will inadvertently rebel and cancel the health care coverage they already enjoy merely to spite those who would dare trying to tell them what to do. And as the government begs them to please, please accept good affordable health care insurance, they will turn their backs so that they may bend and chafe against someone seeking to usurp their sacred freedoms by insisting that they must continue to do what they were already doing in the first place.
But seriously, national teenage angst aside, would anyone now protesting this Obamacare, so-called, actually give up their current insurance if they could? It doesn't really seem so. So for most Americans the individual mandate provision in the health care law is largely a redundancy, telling us to do something - buy health insurance - we would all willing do anyway. To them then the individual mandate is like passing a law telling parents not to let their children play in vats of chemical waste for more than three hours at a time or not to throw all their cash out of open airplane windows, or not to jump from the plane after the money they just threw out the window without a parachute, or that they should wear warm clothing when the temperature drops significantly below zero, etc. Well, you get the idea, some things are just obvious.
For the majority the health care law is neither telling them to do anything they don't want to do nor denying them the right to do what they would choose to do if they could. By all accounts if possible everyone would like to have good, reliable, affordable health care. In fact, since the new health care law will also reduce the federal budget deficit, make health insurance easier for everyone to afford, be harder to be revoked, be easier to hold onto through job changes and ensure that coverage promised and paid for will actually be delivered, it's hard to see any disadvantages in it for the consumer at all. It is especially difficult to see how those most up in arms about the individual mandate would be inconvenienced since they are already doing voluntarily that which they will now be required by law, with help if necessary, to continue doing. It's hard to find the burden in this. It's hard to find the onerous mandate.
Only people who don't have health care will be forced to buy health care. They are the ones who should be loudly complaining about having to pay for something they don't currently have. But they aren't. Because in fact even this is misleading. Because people who don't have health insurance now will not so much be "forced" to buy health insurance but finally be allowed access to buy affordable health insurance. It is a right now that they do not possess. Most who don't have health care would love to have it just as those who have it would be loath to lose it and none who could afford it would ever never gladly give it up.
In this sense the term "individual mandate" is not particularly apt. This is not an instance of the Federal Government dictating behavior on an unwilling public which doesn't desire to do what it is told even when it is for its own good. It is not about telling us to eat our peas. Rather it is a serious attempt to correct an extant flaw in our system which the free market is currently unable or unwilling to correct on its own. It will provide a highly desirable product to millions of Americans who would like to have it but currently cannot. Now admittedly this "right" will not be freely given. They will still have to pay insurance providers for their coverage, exactly like those who are currently covered must do.
Realistically this might more properly be termed an "universal allowance" then than an "individual mandate" in that it will allow millions access to necessary health care coverage they haven't had access to or allow them to keep coverage they already have, or enable those who were heretofore unable to afford insurance to now be able to have. Nor, since these recipients must pay for their insurance, can this be properly called an entitlement. If it were a government "giveaway" to use their terminology, imagine the hew and cry then. But even when the recipients have to pay market price to receive the same type of health care that they do, they find occasion to be mortified at the prospect.
So what do those who hate this new law really hate about it? It seems that the real sticking point is not that it is forcing some Americans to do something they don't want to do but that it is allowing other, poorer Americans the same opportunity to share in the freedoms they already have. The fact it will mandate greater equality in our health care system, and give to many the freedom and abundant life that these protesters take for granted, seems to be exactly what the opponents of this health care plan most resent. They are outraged not because the new health care law will limit freedoms but because it will expand them.
Therefore the central front of those against this health care plan, that it is an egregious assault on individual freedom, seems not only to be an elaborate hoax but precisely opposite the truth. It is exactly that others may be extended the precious right and freedom to buy into free market health insurance plans that offends them most.
Additionally there are countless other requirements, mandates, incentives, exemptions and exceptions littered through our laws. Many of these are far more demanding than this one that they are protesting against. Somehow this fact seems perfectly, consciously lost on the opponents of Obamacares. That they have even found several lower court judges to rule the individual mandate in health care unconstitutional speaks more to the ongoing unholy politicization of the judicial branch than it does to astute jurisprudence.
Meanwhile in the same way seat belt laws are good for individuals the health care mandate is good for the country. In a way too intrinsic to even require explanation the greater health of the citizens of a nation leads directly to the greater health and strength of the nation itself. This is not even debatable. It is tautological.
But I'm certain it's basically a generous impulse for this group that compels them to try to deny those who don't have health insurance the opportunity to buy it lest it somehow obliquely infringe upon their freedoms. I'm sure there's a benign explanation for all this. No one would ever be so malevolent or cruel as to try to deny a person the right to do everything in their power to inoculate their family and loved ones from the eternal ravages of disease, the chaos of unexpected illness and lessen the onset of inevitable death with good, timely, preventive and expert health care. In any case, it's edifying to think that there are some of us so devoted to the freedom of all that they are willing to let a few of us get sick, suffer and die alone without adequate health care just so our collective freedoms may not be infringed. Let this be an inspiration to us all.
Free and/or Equal
Opponents of progress seem to be of the contentious opinion that injustice is not so much an unwholesome byproduct of a free market democracy but a feature essential to its successful existence. They contrive a weird syllogism that says that, since a free market democracy may be unfair and unequal a nation must be unfair and unequal to be a free market market democracy. Therefore, in this rather bizarre scenario they posit it is vital to keep the injustices in our current health care system intact and deny freedom to others in order to maintain the freedoms they already enjoy as if freedom were a limited rather than a renewable resource.
Most Americans would have no dispute with the simple generic statement that every citizen of America is a free and equal partner under the Constitution to share in the responsibilities and benefits of our country. But when theory turns to fact some sometimes want to emphasize the "free" in order to minimize the "equal". However, free and equal were never intended to be mutually exclusive but rather mutually supportive to the degree that one cannot Constitutionally exist without the other. When some are "free" to make others less equal it is merely another form of cultural tyranny that results.
Some pretend and others perhaps actually do believe that injustice is not an unwholesome byproduct of a free market democracy but rather a feature fundamental to its definition. Therefore, in their minds it is necessary to retain the injustice in order to maintain the freedom. Others are so wedded to their preferments that they become hidebound defenders of our endemic inequalities as long as they are on the thick rather than the thin end of them. They think, unlike most of us, that injustice is not the worst part but the best of a free country. They believe that injustice is not the unfortunate residue of freedom, but its sine qua non. They believe this with such an unshakable faith that they are willing to pay more and endure health care inefficiencies' additional costs and denials of services just for the extra privileges and sense of entitlement its relative exclusivity conjures in their minds.
Therefore, enemies of health care and good government claim that attempts to round off or eliminate the worst edges and excesses of free markets' gaps and injustices are doomed by nature and not even worth attempting. Where most would say that with just a few minor alterations and modulations of a free market economy a more perfect union may actually be created - which after all is the stated aim in the very first line of the Constitution - they disagree. Their opinion is not only a denial of the basic precept of democracy but the entire forward march of history. While perfectibility on this earth may ultimately not be possible, our system of government is one that was specifically designed as a living thing "to form a more perfect union," and to continue to try to form a more perfect union, not to make one feeble stab at it and then settle for a poorly designed, unequal, inefficient, outdated and permanently flawed system from then on. On the contrary, we must continue to strive to make this nation more free by making it more equal not less so.
