Healthcare Reform Opponents May Rue a Victory

House Republicans plan a largely symbolic vote this coming week on repealing the health care reform bill. American Spectator contributor Russ Ferguson thinks they should be careful what they wish for:


When healthcare reform passed over substantial objections, those who opposed it scrambled to find ways to get rid of it.

You can repeal it. You can de-fund it. Or, as Virginia's Attorney General Ken Cucinelli decided, you can sue.

And he may be on to something. There does seem to be something wrong with the United States government telling me that I have to go out into the private marketplace and buy something that I just don't want to buy.

After all, this is a capitalist nation, and capitalism is founded not only on choosing among providers in the marketplace, but on having the choice to stay out of the marketplace altogether.

That's what encourages companies to do better, and to give us a valuable service so that we are willing to dole out our hard-earned dollars to obtain it.

And so far, the courts seem to agree that there is something wrong with that. A federal district court judge has ruled that the "individual mandate," as it is called, is in fact unconstitutional.

But are healthcare opponents biting off more than they can chew?

Even if the government doesn't have the right to force us to buy health insurance, they clearly have the right to tax us, and they clearly have the right to use their spending power to buy health insurance for us.

So they could do exactly that: Raise our taxes and provide us with health insurance.

That's exactly what the most ardent supporters of healthcare reform wanted, but it is what opponents feared most: The public option.

Now if opponents succeed in convincing higher courts that the individual mandate is indeed unconstitutional, they may succeed in bringing their biggest fear - the public option - to reality.

The public option is a nationwide system of government-administered healthcare. Opponents argue that means not only long wait times and poor service, but your life - and every decision regarding it - is basically in the government's hands.

The individual mandate, forcing us to go out and buy our own health insurance, was really a product of compromise - some wanted the public option, and some wanted no option at all.

Now, if the Supreme Court finds the individual mandate is in fact unconstitutional, and we go back to the drawing board, the question is, which option will we end up with?

Opponents are hoping it's no option at all. But it could very well be the dreaded public option instead.

[oldgal55]

I found this entire commentary to be offensive as it was given by a young, healthy person who does not have a clue what he is talking about. I wish I could be a fly on the wall the first time he has a medical emergency and has to use that insurance he is so proud of...

[K. Daraa]

'Healthcare Reform'. No, this was health INSURANCE reform. There was no healthcare reform. There is a lot more wrong with healthcare in the United States than insurance. This whole entire issue was derailed off on a tangent using semantics to cloud the real meat of the issue. Why does a doctor need to charge $300 for 15 minutes? Why does an insurance company need to charge a doctor $1 million a year for malpractice insurance, and why do judges in our courts award quarter billion dollar damages in malpractice suits? Why do drug manufacturers charge us $250 a tablet for drugs that cost them 3 cents to manufacture? Why do drug companies discontinue an inexpensive drug only to reinvent another that does the same thing and cost 200 times more? Why do hospitals charge thousands of dollars a day for a bed? The whole system is awash with greed and avarice.

[noloyalisti]

Taxes are what we need to pay too live in a civilized country. It is what the government needs to provide the necessities of life for all its citizens (clean air, water, food, good jobs and educations and health care). It is just that we should Tax The Rich, Too.

[sjc_1]

Using terms like "goofball" does not help. I see no references for your claims, so I would say that is what you believe, true or not.

[noloyalisti]

We should have had that in the first place to give the death panel greedy giant "health" insurance corporations some competition.

[mikelpond]

and how, exactly do you intend to "stay out of the market for health care altogether" Honestly, unless you intend to go right out and step in front of a train, this makes no sense. You see, that's the important differance between health care and almost everything else: we are all going to neeed it. And so, when you get sick, you'll just leave to the tax payer to pick up the tab for your EM room visit. I wonder, with such poor reasoning, how you came to be employed by this once proud news orgaqnization.

[jwoolman5]

I already have a five-year wait time - had to cancel my health insurance last January when the premium finally reached 53% of my pre-tax income. I was fully insured for decades and had struggled to keep the premiums up through bad economic times (self-employed) when I had a minor infection three years previously and found out how much the insurance company cherry-picks what they pay for a "100% above the deductible" policy - and then they forced me to double my deductible. I'm still paying off the debt on that little misadventure, and even with insurance - between the cherry-picking and the high deductible, I still couldn't afford to get sick or injured. So my only hope is to not need to see a doctor until I reach medicare age in a few years...

Anybody who voted for the doofuses who want to dismantle the health care reforms just has never been sick or injured. They'll learn when all they've worked hard for vanishes in an instant. The elected doofuses don't care - they're rich politicians who have excellent health care insurance on the public payroll.

Friends in other countries who have a sensible program (paying a very small percentage of their income in taxes for a system that works when they need it, with very reasonable copays, and doesn't drive them into debt) think we're insane here. It's crazy to let greedy profiteers determine whether or not we can get medical attention when needed, which is the current system. At least a public option would allow us to have some real impact on the decisions, just as we, the people, have something to say about changes in Social Security/Medicare because we voted the rascals in and can vote them out.

[robbyr2]

This guy is a nutjob. One ultra-right-wing, still on the payroll Republican operative turned judge ruled against the mandate to make so-called "healthy" people stop passing the cost of their care to me and the other insured Americans. Two judges ruled the opposites.

Only 18% of Americans want to repeal the whole Act. The R's would do better to help figure out how to improve it, which would include the public option, more incentives for private insurers to clamp down on rising costs (the more money they pay out, the more money they make, and the more they can pay their CEOs).

[either1or]

The four year term where the US government stood still. We'd have been better off if all our elected officials had gone fishin!

[MisterSquash]

Some states require auto insurance, shall we sue?

[brian_norwood]

What I laugh about is the very little thought given by the GOP to what happens if they are successful in getting the courts to declare mandatory coverage as unconstitutional.

The other provisions to the bill will stand. Including pre-existing conditions, children till 26 yrs., no lifetime caps, etc.

The insurance companies would have been able to offset these costs by the guarantee of millions of new customers. But if no mandatory coverage, this offset goes away.

What will be the result? You guessed it.