The random political thoughts thread (Part Deux)

[scaeagles]

Originally Posted by Strangler Lewis

If these were industry-wide mandates among private health insurers or large employers who paid for insurance--so that choice/opting out wouldn't really be an option--would you be as upset? It would still be the all-powerful impinging on our freedom to destroy ourselves in the name of saving a buck.

The beauty of the free market is that any industry wide mandate is either 1) forced upon the industry by the government or 2) disallowed by the government. Being that this is the case, I would be outraged, because it would be the government allowing it. So I suppose I answered it, but I disagree with the premise of the question.

The government has already done several good things in terms of portability of insurance. This was a fix I believe was prudent and necessary in a system where the primary source of health insurance is from employment. Only made sense to mandate that if an employee with a health difficulty changed jobs they couldn't be denied coverage at their new employ because of a pre existing condition.

I would not object if the private insurance system had programs that allowed discounts for healthy lifestyles or penalties for unhelthy ones....in fact, we already have it, but not to any extreme. Smokers may have to pay more for health and life insurance, and this is fine. I get a company discount on my employee portion of my health insurance costs by filling out a "health analysis" survey.

I don't have anyone forcing me to do anything.

I exercise daily because I see it as something that's beneficial. I don't eat many veggies. We all have things we do that aren't good for us. I don't want the government deciding that I can't be covered because of that. If I have a private company tell me that I must do something or pay more, than I have a choice.