The Freeman is one of the great old bastions of liberty that more people should know about. As experts in economics, they have double-credibility that goes beyond mere idealism. They recently had an article entitled The Goal Is Freedom: The Mandated Health Insurance Outrage. It includes such on-target observations as these:
Who do these politicians think they are? Our lives are not theirs to dispose of.
Politicians love to sugarcoat their threats of force. So the Reid bill calls the mandate “shared responsibility.” To those who wonder by what authority the government can make us buy insurance against our will, the bill alludes to the Constitution’s Commerce Clause, which gives Congress the power to “regulate … commerce among the several states.”
(Aside: that clause is the most misused in the Constitution, twisted to cover thousands of affronts to liberty through misapplication and propped up historically by the courts.)
After quoting from Reid’s bill to provide the “justification” for claiming the mantle of the Commerce Clause, The Freeman offers this observation:
In other words, for the sake of making the insurance market work better, we must be forced to buy coverage. How’s that for a justification?
It’s amazing how many fallacies can be stuffed into one argument.
I’ll mention one of them that had occurred to me also. The Feds claim authority to impose this under the Commerce Clause, yet under current law insurance companies are forbidden to compete across state lines. It is the exact opposite of interstate commerce.
Ironically, though, if they gutted everything else from the bill and substituted one item allowing interstate commerce, they would go a long way toward fixing the actual cause of our healthcare crisis, which is government interference in the first place. The ruling party will not do so, however; it gives up too much government control.
There is much, much more in the article, all meat. It’s definitely worth a thoughtful read.