President Barack Obama talks on the phone with Solicitor General Donald Verrilli in the Oval Office, after learning of the Supreme Court’s ruling on the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” June 28, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Repealing ObamaCare’s individual mandate will be a tax cut for many Americans (we know it’s a tax because Justice Roberts called the mandate a tax). This will be a relief to Americans, who paid more than $4.5 billion in penalties for failing to enroll in an Obamacare-compliant health-care plan in 2016. But that’s not the real reason to cheer. As Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner notes, “the biggest problem with the individual mandate is not a question of money.”
The idea that government can force every American to purchase a specific product, even for the common good, is deeply offensive to the American idea of individual liberty. There is a good reason why the individual mandate is the most unpopular part of Obamacare: It runs contrary to the American character, and fundamentally alters the relationship between government and the individual. That alone would justify repeal.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that within a decade as many as 13 million more people will go without insurance. For many of those people, forgoing insurance is not a wise decision. But it is still their decision. Contrary to progressive talking points, no one’s insurance is going to be taken away.
(I)f your health-care model depends on a product so lousy and overpriced that no one will buy it unless you force them to … well, perhaps you should rethink it.
Read more from Michael Tanner here.
