Yesterday, the Massachusetts legislature passed a bill that would required every citizen of the state to obtain health insurance or face a fine from the state. And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, the state’s allegedly Republican Governor, Mitt Romney, appears to be on the verge of signing the bill into law.
BOSTON, April 4 — The Massachusetts legislature approved a bill Tuesday that would require all residents to purchase health insurance or face legal penalties, which would make this the first state to tackle the problem of incomplete medical coverage by treating patients the same way it does cars.
Gov. Mitt Romney (R) supports the proposal, which would require all uninsured adults in the state to purchase some kind of insurance policy by July 1, 2007, or face a fine. Their choices would be expanded to include a range of new and inexpensive policies — ranging from about $250 per month to nearly free — from private insurers subsidized by the state.
Romney said the bill, modeled on the state’s policy of requiring auto insurance, is intended to end an era in which 550,000 people go without insurance and their hospital and doctor visits are paid for in part with public funds.
“We insist that everybody who drives a car has insurance,” Romney said in an interview. “And cars are a lot less expensive than people.”
There are several problems with Governor Romney’s logic. The first of these is that laws requiring drivers to require automobile insurance generally only require drivers to require insurance coverage for accidents in which they are at fault. While this is still coercive from a libertarian point of view, there is still a certain logic to it; if you are going to drive a multi-ton vehicle on public highways, the requirement that you have sufficent insurance to cover injuries that might result from your negligence is not unreasonable.
The same logic cannot be applied to health insurance. If I choose not to obtain health insurance, my decision may be foolish, and probably is, but it affects only myself. The auto-insurance argument cannot logically apply to this situation. Unless, of course, you introduce the welfare state into the mix. That, however, is an argument against the welfare state, not an argument in favor of mandatory health insurance.
Of equal importance, though, are the actions of Mitt Romney in connection with this bill. Romney, as I said, pretends to be a Republican. He also has ambitions to be President. If he signs this bill into law, any Republican who continues to support him and still pretends to believe that their party stands for anything needs to hand in their membership card.
Technorati Tags: Massachusetts, Health Care, Republicans, GOP, 2008 Election, Mitt Romney, Politics
April 6th, 2006 at 12:05 am
Massachusetts’ False Insurance Analogy
The Massachusetts Legislature has passed a bill that would make health insurance compulsory in that state:Gov. Mitt Romney (R) supports the p…