Health Care "Reform" Includes Mandating Purchasing Health Insurance

How exactly does this make health care cheaper? It forces people to buy health care, whether they want to or not. That means that if you want to avoid the cost of buying health insurance (like for instance someone in good health and in their 20s), you're not going to be able to do so.

Both those Americans who can’t afford to buy health insurance and those who have decided to get by without it will face the same order from congressional Democrats as they prepare legislation to overhaul health care: buy health insurance. And if they can’t afford the coverage, taxpayers will help them pay for it.

The reform bills offered by both Senate and House Democrats would impose an individual mandate — a requirement that everyone obtain health insurance. Taxpayer-provided subsidies would go to lower-income Americans if they could not afford to purchase it.

The Senate health committee’s draft bill would require all legal residents of the United States to have insurance and would penalize people who did not obtain insurance, except those with incomes below about $16,250. The House Democrats’ bill has a similar provision.

In the most recent Census estimate, published last August, nearly 46 million people, or about 15 percent of the population, were without health insurance in 2007.

So, on top of ramming through additional costs on millions of Americans who do not currently see a need for health insurance, they're going to penalize these same people for refusing to get health insurance.

Does this sound like a cost savings? Well, enlarging the pool of insured means that the costs for health care get spread among a larger pool of people, but it doesn't actually reduce the amount of money spent on health care.

It also means that millions of Americans will be forced to spend far more on health care than they are currently spending. That's money that could be spent on other goods and services.

Again, the Administration and Democrats in general have done an amazing job obfuscating the differences between access to health care and affordability. Anyone in the US can get health care. The problem is that some people balk at the cost of that care. The Democrats' plans all involve forcing people into health care choices that they wouldn't ordinarily make, and will result in higher costs for everyone.

It's also presenting a false choice. People with low incomes are already covered by state and federal health insurance. It's called Medicaid. It would, however, penalize those who opt not to get this insurance.