According to a report at Politico.com another bit of our freedom will slide away if ObamaCare passes into law:
Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) received a handwritten note Thursday from Joint Committee on Taxation Chief of Staff Tom Barthold confirming the penalty for failing to pay the up to $1,900 fee for not buying health insurance.
Violators could be charged with a misdemeanor and could face up to a year in jail or a $25,000 penalty, Barthold wrote on JCT letterhead. He signed it "Sincerely, Thomas A. Barthold."
According to the bill currently before the Senate (Sen. Max Baucus' bill) you will be required to buy health insurance, regardless of whether you think you need it or not, and regardless of whether you want it or not. If you don't buy it you will be fined. If you don't pay the fine you will be put in jail. How's that for Hope 'n Change?
The argument is sometimes made that this is no different than requiring people to buy automobile insurance, but that argument is specious. You are not required to buy automobile insurance unless you drive. If you don't drive you don't have to buy it. Moreover, drivers are required to have coverage in the event they harm someone else in a traffic accident. If a driver could only harm himself there would be no need to require coverage.
If people wish to risk not having health coverage they should have that right, but then medical facilities should have the right, as a general principle, to decline treating those who accept that risk. Government should stay out of it.
The reason for requiring coverage, of course, is that it's hard to mandate that insurance companies cover pre-existing conditions if people can wait to buy insurance until they have a problem. By forcing everyone into the system, insurers will have enough capital to cover PEC patients they'd be unable to cover under the current system. The problem is that a lot of people are too well off to qualify for medicaid but too poor to be able to afford to buy insurance or to even pay the $1900 fine. These people should be free to decide how they wish to direct their meager resources without the nanny state coercing them into buying health insurance.
The idea that health care coverage is somehow a right is, in any event, a rather recent and dubious, invention. Millions of people alive today grew up with no "right" to health care coverage and chose to risk living without it until they were able to afford it or got a job that offered it.
The Baucus bill is an attempt to take away the freedom you have to manage your own affairs and to make your own choices in life. If, as we've been told with monotonous regularity since the 70s, the government should stay out of our bedrooms, then even more should the government stay out of our decisions about how to manage our finances and our health care.
RLC
