Let Them Eat Broccoli

 

 

It is hard to comprehend how jurists who are presumably learned and sophisticated, can subscribe to a line of argument that is so childish and simplistic.

The health care mandate is not about forcing people to eat broccoli or join a gym. Those are activities that may or may not affect health and, therefore, the cost of providing health care. Mandatory insurance doesn’t mean people will be healthier – it simply means that when they inevitably become ill, the burden of paying for their care will not be shifted to others.

The mandate is not “ creating commerce in order to regulate it “. The commerce being regulated is the health care system, an existing industry. That industry is impacted by the decisions made by individuals, to buy or not to buy health insurance. It is a given, and inevitable, that every person in this country will, at some point in their life, require medical assistance because people become ill, are injured and ultimately die. Our society will inevitably respond to those who are injured, ill or dying and attempt to cure illness, repair injury and save or prolong life. There is a cost for such intervention which will be paid by patients with adequate funds, or by insurers, or by Society at large ( in the case of those who have no insurance and are unable to pay for care ).

So, unlike abstention from broccoli, the failure to buy insurance will shift the burden of paying for medical care from the recipient to the provider or the taxpayer. Congress has determined there are at least 43 million uninsured, potential cost-shifters and it has the power to impose requirements that prevent such an unfair imbalance from destabilizing the interstate health care industry.

 

Gerald Harris

March 27, 2012