HealthCare Reform: Going into Details, People Would Support Slavery

Jake Tapper of This Week interview David Axelrod about the healthcare bill.

This bill is important to the American people, Jake, and when you get underneath the numbers and you ask people, do you support giving people more leverage against insurance companies so that they — if they have preexisting conditions, they can get coverage, so if they get sick, they don’t get thrown off, so they don’t have these huge premium increases of the sort we’ve just seen announced in states around the country, they say yes.

But again, when you go underneath, they support the elements of the plan. When you ask them, does the health care system need reform, three quarters of them say yes. When you ask them, do you want Congress to move forward and deal with this issue, three quarters of them say yes. So we’re not going to walk away from this issue.

David Axelrod’s arguement is most people are in favor of the details in the bill, therefore it is a good idea. One detail Axelrod left out–the majority of people are opposed to making health insurance mandatory. Leaving out the “mandatory” part is no small detail to be ignored, and here is why:

If polled most Americans would probably answer yes to all these question.

Would you like the cost of food and clothing to go down?
Would you like the cost of your housing to never go up?
Do you want to prevent people from ever going homeless?
Would you like not having to struggle to make ends meet?
Would you like to live in a country that was more organized?
Do you want congress to take action to make your life simpler?
Are you in favor of the federal government regulating work place rules?

Using the same rational as David Axelrod: If you leave out the detail of losing your freedom, we can conclude most people are really in favor of slavery.

Better HeathCare Analogies: Coal Miners and Salt

In the health care debate one of the most common analogies has been to compare mandatory health insurance with auto insurance. I want to throw in a couple more analogies to mandatory health care debate as food for thought. Coal miners forced to purchase from company stores and French citizens forced to buy salt.

Where the health insurance to auto insurance analogy matches up:

Its insurance.
Its mandatory.

Where mandatory auto and health insurance analogy do not match:

Not everyone is required to have auto insurance.
States mandate auto insurance, not the federal government.
Auto insurance is there to protect harm done to individuals.
Mandatory health insurance protects profits of the health care industry.

Another analogy to mandatory health insurance can be found in the early days of coal mining, where miners were forced to purchase from the company store.

Coal Miners analogy matches the health care proposal in:

Mandatory purchasing from selected stores and products.
Mandatory purchasing increases corporate profits.

Where Coal Miners analogy doesn’t match:

Everything miners needed to sustain themselves–food, medicine, clothing and shelter–was a mandatory purchase from the company, with the exception of health insurance.
The miners had the option of leaving the company town and seeking employment elsewhere.

A better analogy can be made between mandatory health insurance and Gabelle: the French Salt Tax. Prior to the French Revolution, the government mandated everyone above the age of eight years to purchase a weekly minimum amount of salt at a fixed price.

From The History News Network: Will a 2nd American Revolution be French?

There were a slew of other taxes as well, some of them quite creative. For example, there was a salt monopoly tax by which everyone over the age of 7 (as I remember) was required to purchase several lbs of highly-inferior government salt each and every year. The law also proscribed how the salt could be used and imposed heavy fines for misuse, such as in preservation of meat.

French Salt Tax matches mandatory healthcare:

Everyone required to purchase.
Mandatory amount to purchase.
Doesn’t matter if you can afford to buy either.
Protects profits of the industry.

Where the Salt Tax analogy doesn’t match mandatory healthcare insurance:

It’s salt!

Congress: Just Gimme Two New Parties

Here is Senator McCaskill arguing for extending unemployment benefits. The speech starts out with McCaskill pointing out Republican senators voted for prescription drugs for Medicare beneficiaries without paying for it. It is not very clear, but the argument seems to be if it was OK in the past to avoid worrying about debt, we shouldn’t be worrying about debt today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBAzOEq9r-M

Senator McCaskill mentions cosponsoring PAYGO, but seems to be saying pay as you go can be ignored because of Republican hypocrisy of not paying for programs. All I can gather from this is its OK to be hypocritical, as long as the opposition is more hypocritical.

It’s a safe bet that soon there will be a Republican senator pointing to Democratic hypocrisy on debt as an excuse more debt. I want at least two completely new parties to take power just so we can get away from this justification via hypocrisy arguments. Two new parties would at least hit the reset button on finger pointing for a few years–maybe even long enough to fix DC.