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Comment by lutorm | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why people are so opposed to the "mandate". We have the same thing in so many other places, only those are handled by paying taxes for things you might not need.

I can't avoid buying "invasion insurance" by not paying for the military. I can't avoid buying "transportation insurance" by not paying for roads. Why is paying for health care any different?

If anything socializing health care costs makes more sense than transportation infrastructure, because the needs are so unpredictable and beyond the individual's control and the costs so potentially huge.

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I am opposed to the mandate because it requires me to purchase something from a private party just because I am alive.

If you want everyone to pay something, we (as you pointed out) have something for that, it's called taxes. And that's what pays for your other "insurance" examples. (And don't bring up auto insurance. I don't have to have it, I can choose to not own a car.)

But by involving private companies you have creates perverse incentives that I have no sway or visibility into.

If we want to socialize health care then lets do that, but lets not introduce a private party middle man that not only disconnects the payer from the consumer but has a government mandated client base of the whole US.

I am opposed to it because it is a horrible individual rights breaking precedent.

But transportation taxes also require you to purchase something from a private party. You just hand your money to the government, who does the purchasing for you.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a strong believer in single payer health care (I'm from Sweden), but in the absence of that, whether you pay the money in taxes or directly to a private end party doesn't seem that different to me. (And the US Supreme Court apparently agrees, since the mandate was upheld as constitutional.)

Yes. And I have a semblance of input to the government. Again, I am fine if it is decided that we need to raise taxes to cover such things. What I am against is the government telling me I have to buy something. It is a precedent that is sure to get abused and distorted in the future.

If it is allowed it will not stop at health insurance. Business has too active a hand in the US government as it is. How much worse will it get when they start greasing the palms to make sure they too have a required audience?

Edit: (Forgot) Yes, the supreme court upheld it. That doesn't make it right, just constitutional. If an amendment to the constitution is required, then so be it.

Seriously, it has me considering moving to another country.

> Seriously, it has me considering moving to another country.

The torture, indefinite detention, universal surveillance, and permanent war were insufficient on their own? It took buying healthcare?

The mandate was not upheld as constitutional, because there is no mandate.

One can decide not to buy insurance, and instead pay a penalty. The Court ruled that this penalty is a permissible tax.

This doesn't make it right, or even correct. The Supreme Court is not infallible and often gets it wrong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plessy_v._Ferguson

Out of interest where do you stand on educational vouchers? What about charter schools?

My children actually attend a tuition-free, public Montessori charter school and am personally fine with vouchers. I am all for choice and individual freedoms, rights and responsibilities.

So if the government agreed to fund a number of local 'health insurance charters' out of general taxation in proportion to sign-ups - but just mandated that you had to sign up to one of those - would that be acceptable?

How does that differ, really, from an individual insurance mandate?

Collecting taxes and providing, by hiring a private company, a service

vs.

Mandating that I purchase a private company's services myself.

In the first case, the government uses its bargaining power (all that money) to negotiate a lower price by requesting bids and selecting a provider. In the second case, I'm a captive customer with little, if any, bargaining power. My bargaining power does indeed depend on how this second arrangement is legislated and how many providers are available to me.

> I am opposed to the mandate because it requires me to purchase something from a private party just because I am alive.

Yeah, this is something I feel very strongly about in Australia. For context, we have a fairly good public healthcare system. I've been to the hospital many times (not for anything much serious) and never paid anything. It's free to have a baby in a hospital (well, apart from taxes). Private health cover, while it exits, is not a necessity.

Then, the 'Medicare Levy Surcharge' was introduced to encourage higher-income earners to take out private health cover (PHC) to supposedly reduce the strain on the public system. So now, unless I take out PHC I get hit with a $3000 fine at tax time. So I took out a $800/year junk policy which gets me basically nothing and is not something that I need.

I'm really annoyed that the government more or less forces (because regardless how I feel on the topic, it's not unreasonable for me to choose a $800 option over a $3000 option) me to hand money over to a private company for a product that I neither need or will use.

> If you want everyone to pay something, we (as you pointed out) have something for that, it's called taxes.

Yep, and that's the catch about politics.

The ACA could've been challenged earlier by the Republicans if it introduced a new tax to pay for itself. That would've been the natural thing to do, and the Democrats were well aware of it. Because of that Republican blockage, they had to hide that fee in the "mandate" instead. Of course the Republicans weren't dupes and sued against it, but the courts sided with the Democrats accepting that the mandate wasn't a "tax". I wish I could come up with a source (it was big news back then), but right now my google search is overloaded with another recent ACA-related budget fight :\

There were many better alternatives to the current ACA as it is, including a single-payer option. But we got the ACA (which started as a Heritage Foundation idea[1], they're a nicely conservative think tank) because that's the best the Democrats could get past the Republicans.

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2011/10/20/how-a-c...

> I am opposed to the mandate because it requires me to purchase something from a private party just because I am alive.

I agree. And what bothers me further is that I am vehemently opposed to patents, while I am forced to send a lot of my money to drug patent holders.

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