The latest excuse that Obummercare’s supporters are floating for its multiple, inherent, and predictable failures is that it’s just too doggone nice to us.
Yes.
That Obummercare has forcibly deprived some Americans of their doctors, that it has compelled others to purchase insurance they neither want nor need—none of that troubles Progressives. Instead, they want the State to coerce even more of us, even more mercilessly.
A writer at the lefty website, Vox, “spoke with Princeton University health economist Uwe Reinhardt.” He opined,
When you [sic for “government”] do this [i.e., nationalize medical insurance] as the Swiss or Germans do, you brutally enforce the mandate. You make young people sign up and pay. But we are too chicken to do that, so we allow people to stay out by doing two things: We give them a mandate penalty that is lower than the premium. And we tell them, If you’re really sick, we’ll take care of you anyhow. …
When [the Swiss or Germans] run these exchanges, they accompany them with a very harsh mandate. If you don’t obey the mandate, the Swiss find out, and they go after you and garnish your wages. If you’re not insured, they’ll look at your wages and recoup the premiums you owe. They’re very tough. And we’ve never been tough. …
There are two reasons [that the US will never suffer from a system like Switzerland’s or Germany’s, thank God]. One of them is the fight you have over telling people you have to buy from private insurance, and the litigation over the commerce clause. So I think it’s systemic in that Congress wouldn’t have the guts to do it.
Voters will say, You’re trampling my premiums by making me buy this — but you’d be surprised at how many things you have to buy, like the seat belts in your car. …
You need an enforced mandate where the government will say, You live in this country, we’ll look after you when you’re sick, and you owe it as a civic duty to pay toward that. …
Is it me, or are these people really, really sick?
Nor is their contagion limited to Vox and one demented “health economist.” New York Magazine, always somewhere to the left of Pravda, quotes these ideas approvingly under the headline, “Obamacare’s Biggest Problem Is That It’s Not Tyrannical Enough.”
That “tyrannical” may be the first, last and only bit of honesty we’ll ever see from these sociopaths. Meanwhile, I’m trying to fathom how they live with themselves. “Brutally enforce,” “very harsh mandate,” “very tough,” “go after you”—this is the Progressive recipe for government’s relationship with us serfs.
4:26 pm on August 25, 2016
