Health care: Should insurance be mandatory?

President Obama wants to insure the uninsured, said Shailagh Murray in The Washington Post, but what if they don’t want his help? A central assumption of most of the health-care proposals being debated in Congress is that the government should require every citizen to have health insurance. Various Democratic plans try to achieve this goal by imposing a hefty annual fine on those who don’t buy policies. Under one such plan, a family of four getting by on a household income of $66,000 would be hit with an annual fine of $3,800 if they have no coverage. That would certainly further President Obama’s goal of universal coverage, but what about the 10 million Americans between 19 and 26 who now lack insurance precisely because they prefer to spend their scarce dollars on other things and “bet on their good health”?

Those folks are the losers in this scheme, said Philip Klein in TheAmericanSpectator.com. Older, sicker people generally need more health care than they can afford, and Obama’s solution is to make young, healthy people “pay for more health care than they need.” Let’s call this what it is—a new tax on the young and the middle class. Young people are just starting to figure this out, said Dick Morris in the New York Post. Obama has already alienated seniors with his proposed $500 billion Medicare cut. Now that people in their 20s realize they’re being strong-armed into buying insurance they could do without, they could easily be “the next demographic group to jump ship.”

But they aren’t jumping yet, said Cynthia Tucker in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In fact, polls show that 60 percent of Americans between 18 and 34 are in favor of health-care reform, in contrast to the 60 percent of the over-65s who oppose it. Those aren’t the numbers you’d expect if this were really a plan to steal from the young and give to the old. The truth, of course, is that while some young Americans may be uninsured because they “feel invincible,” others simply can’t afford coverage. They’ll make different choices if reforming the system makes it possible for them to pay a reasonable premium for coverage and the peace of mind that comes with it. And if their incomes are low, the government will provide subsidies to help pay for that coverage. Betting on good health isn’t very smart—not for the young, and not for the millions of people who indirectly pay the bills when the uninsured get sick.

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