No one until now has challenged the ant-conservative premise of compelling people to purchase health insurance.
Governor Mitt Romney, in 2007, argued that by compelling everyone in the state of Massachusetts to purchase health insurance, then the state would no longer have to pick up the tab for patients who receive emergency care but do not pay for it.
“Cost shifting” however, cannot justify forcing people to pay for coverage while ending their power and authority to assess what kind of risk they are willing to take on. This argument is essential to the individual liberty of an insurance client.
If President Obama had authored a tax in the healthcare reform bill, he would have been honest with the American people, but he would have compromised his chances of appealing to swing voters in Congress, many of whom did not want to thrust a tax on their constituents.
Government has never succeeded in promising services and accurately assessing the cost of collecting and distributing these funds. The waste and fraud that would ensue from this mandate would undermine and reform, even if the President and his party has dressed up the program as a tax.
More exacting reforms would be appropriate, perhaps. Why not forbid hospitals from accepting patients who cannot prove their citizenship in this country? Congressman Dana Rohrabacher floated this proposal a few years ago, without many backers. Certainly the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1986 must be amended, outlining the revenue streams that hospitals can draw from when they take in patients who cannot pay for their care.
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