Quote:Owning a car isn't mandatory. You still have price control in the free market because consumers have the option of not using private transporation at all and avoiding car insurance. 

 

To keep your analogy imagine if we passed a law that said EVERYONE doesn't matter if you own one car, two cars, or no cars is mandated to carry automobile insurance. What would that do to auto insurance rates? They would sky rocket because the market is forced to buy their product no matter what!

 

Actually, auto insurance rates would go way down if people who didn't own autos were forced to buy auto insurance.  If you don't own a car, you won't ever file a claim. 

 

Really, the only way insurance works is if there is a broad base of coverage that includes people who do not file claims.  Hence the mandate that everyone have health insurance.   You have to force healthy people to buy health insurance, otherwise, only sick people would buy health insurance, and either health insurance companies would be bankrupted, or insurance rates would go to the moon.   

 

My personal view is that I am subsidizing the health care of people who eat too many potato chips and drink too many milk shakes.  Watching fat people walk around with subsidized health care does rankle me.  Why force me to subsidize their health care when they won't do the simplest thing, which is lose a few pounds so they don't develop diabetes and heart disease.   I'm forced to subsidize their health insurance, so why not force them to make better choices?   Is there a single healthy thing on the menu at Sonic?   I see commercials for Sonic, and I think, my taxes went up because of them.  They're giving people diabetes and heart disease, and I'm paying for it with Obamacare tax surcharges.   So do we outlaw Sonic, or do we let people die in the streets because they don't have health insurance?  A large part of me says, I'm subsidizing people's bad lifestyle choices.  We need to be cruel to these people.   Another part of me says, I don't want to see a society where people are forced to live with their lifestyle choices.   Nobody wants to recreate Dickensian England with very rich people stepping over very poor people who are lying in the street dying because they don't have health insurance.  I'll pay some taxes to level things out a little. 

 

It's a difficult issue, a lot more difficult than proponents and opponents seem to want to admit. 

 

Basically, liberals want to take care of people, and conservatives want people to live with the consequences of their actions.  I am a little of both.   In my view, both liberals and conservatives like to see things in very simple terms, and don't seem to want to admit that things are complicated. 

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