on the issue of mandatory auto insurance fwiw, i am not aware of any state traffic code that requires auto insurance on private property. ditto for seatbelts. now, i'm a pretty libertarian guy and used to be against mandatory seatbelts laws, however now i am for them, for a # of reasons having to do with the privileged nature of driving (on public roadways), the fact that it causes no privacy intrusion and minimal inconvenience while resulting in massive savings to society, etc... anyways, the mandatory insurance law is a weird analogy for a # of reasons 1) nobody has a RIGHT to drive. you have a privilege to drive. keep in mind that driving ON PUBLIC ROADWAYS is a highly regulated activity, that takes place on taxpayer funded roadways, and in the course of which you operate lethal weapons (that cause 10's of thousands of deaths/serious injuries per year) so, whether or not the insurance thang that romney is speaking of is a good or bad idea, it is not really an apt analogy. because the insurance thing mandates activity that is very different from driving, to wit - living in the state of MA. i havent made up my mind whether or not i like the MA law, but it is interesting...
They're both vehicles you're riding in, your car, your body. An accident involving either one typically has negative consequences on other people besides just the driver. For that reason, amongst others, we insist on insuring the one, so why not the other?
So you think having a larger pool of insured will drive costs up? One of the biggest problems with current health care is a lack of market incentive. Do you really think $500 is "huge" deductible? I recently switched from a conventional health plan to an HSA. Basically I am my own insurance company for the first $5,000. But, I get to keep the money if I don't need to spend on health related issues. HSA are the fastest growing plan. That says alot about their acceptance. What's your plan?
"They're both vehicles you're riding in, your car, your body. An accident involving either one typically has negative consequences on other people besides just the driver. For that reason, amongst others, we insist on insuring the one, so why not the other" this is either silly sophistry, or just dumb a car is not a person among other distinctions - people have rights. some are even not "alienable". cars are objects, they are property, and they have no rights. cmon. if you don't know the difference between a person and a car, spare me i said i have not made up my mind on this plan, but i have made up my mind that you are making a silly and irrelevant comment
If we keep arguing about the difference between mandatory auto vis-a-vis a health insurance, we may have to rename the "Bill of Rights" to the "Bill of Privileges." A "privilege" is a license granted by a sovereign to permit a person to act in a manner which would otherwise be prohibited by the sovereign. Conversely, a "right" is the inalienable authority to act in a manner which a sovereign might otherwise prohibit. The difference between a right and a privilege is HUGE. A mandatory automobile insurance law is imposed on the privilege of operating a motor vehicle on a public road -- presumably to mitigate the risk caused to others who share the road by operation of the vehicle. Since driving the vehicle is a privilege, it has no protected status under the Bill of Rights. MA's mandatory health insurance law is imposed on the personal right to dispose of one's own property in the manner of one's own choosing. This personal authority to dispose of one's own property is a protected right under the 5th Amendment, so it has a completely different legal status. I am not arguing here about the value of health insurance. However, if you are offering me the choice between health insurance and a loss of my 5th Amendment property rights, I choose the latter -- as should you all, unless you wish to establish Marxist Communism as the political-economic theory under which this nation operates.
I suspect that eventually the United States will have universal coverage because the cost to insure is just getting too high for companies. Look at GM and F, Health Care is a big part of the reason they are looking downn the barrel of bankruptcy. We are going to see large corporations telling the govt that they can no longer compete on a global scale because they have to pay for the insurance of the people working for them, and so when it becomes in the best interest of the people who truely matter then it will get done.
this of course is tied back to the concept of insurance being tied to employers/employment, which while taken for granted by many was a relatively radical concept when introduced just a thought...
It's not a loss of your 5th Amendment property rights though. The money for health insurance is, in this case, a subset of anyone's money, and therefore not all their property, if money were all we were talking about. Call it a "softening" of the 5th Amendment, but it's hardly the end of the 5th Amendment.
While the jury may still be out about whether or not this is going to work, even those of you who are the most vocal of critics can not deny one thing: The politicians of MA have accomplished more to address this problem than those of 49 other states. IMHO, the success of this experiment hinges on a very critical part of this issue that I don't see addressed yet: changing the way insurers treat the insured and the healthcare providers. We shall see.