Comes now for debate the health care law proposed by the Democratic Party caucus of the U.S. Senate.
The new thing in this law that strikes me is the idea of imposing fines for not buying health insurance. Troubling, that. Employers would pay penalties of $750 per employee, and families a like amount per person, for exercising the prerogative not to spend money on something they do not want.
We do not pause to ask why people do not want it, or what alternative might actually be something they would want. No, we determine by fiat what is to be desired, then punish people for not desiring it. The advocate for such a law is quick to claim that it leaves people free to do as they like. But his idea amounts to charging a government license fee to exercise that freedom.
I understand the social economic argument here. It is to deal with the problem of free riders, non-payers who purportedly count on getting health care without cost in any event of need. The cost of this care gets shifted into the overhead expense of hospitals and doctors, who pass it through to public and private insurance providers in the form of higher fees. ”Make them pay!” is the mantra of the day. “When they pay what they ought, the rest of us will save some money.”
But we are talking about a small minority of the population. Any gain in money at their expense for the sake of a generalized good comes at a cost in individual liberty for the large majority of us whose health premium payments cease to be voluntary acts of civil responsibility.
If the idea of fee-for-freedom takes hold, then it can easily make its way into other desires for modifying the behavior of the populace. This possibility has fascinating implications for a country’s international competitiveness. Far from erecting walls, the U.S. immigration problem a few years from now might become a puzzle in how to attract enough people to come here, or even how to stem a net outfow of capital and know-how to other, freer parts of the world.
Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its
best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
Thomas Paine, Common Sense- 1776