Don't punish the innocent and lessen their personal health choices.

or, A Tax on the Healthy.

The New York Times argues for mandatory premiums from those Americans choosing not to consume medical services.

Make no mistake, they advocate directly reaching in and transferring dollars* from monthly household budgets of non-consumers, to hospitals and medical providers who need help keeping their own books balanced when they can't collect from their customers:

The number of states jointly suing to overturn the new health care reform law on constitutional grounds swelled to 20 last week. ... The lawsuit, filed by state attorneys general and governors ... seeks to overturn two central elements of the law: a mandate that virtually everyone obtain insurance or pay a penalty; and a big expansion of Medicaid, the state-federal insurance program that covers the poorest Americans.

The suit contends Congress has no constitutional power to compel people to make purchases from a private company and that the required expansion of Medicaid is an “unprecedented encroachment” on the sovereignty of states.
...
The group’s brief ... contends it will be a hardship for the plaintiffs to buy insurance they don’t want or pay monetary penalties. It charges that Congress exceeded its authority under the Constitution by requiring, for the first time, that people buy something simply because they reside legally in the country.

The Justice Department first challenged the timing of the suits. It pointed out that the plaintiffs have filed suit “four years before the provision they challenge takes effect, demonstrate no current injury, and merely speculate whether the law will harm them once it is in force.”

The department argued that Congress can impose and enforce the mandate under its powers to regulate interstate commerce and to tax and spend to provide for the general welfare.

The law center had argued that people who refuse to buy insurance are not engaging in activity that affects interstate commerce, but choosing not to engage in such activity. The Justice Department replied that even refusals to buy insurance can, in the aggregate, have a substantial effect on interstate commerce.

If people without insurance need costly medical care and can’t pay, they typically get cared for anyway. The cost is shifted to hospitals, which in turn shift some of the costs to privately insured patients and to taxpayers who help subsidize the hardest hit hospitals.

Most important, a mandate is deemed essential to the effective functioning of individual health insurance markets that are clearly part of interstate commerce.

If the healthiest people are allowed to opt out, the average premiums will escalate and make insurance increasingly unaffordable for everyone.

And we return to George Will's question for Elena Kagan's confirmation hearings: Does the federal government then also have the Constitutional right to require daily calinsthetics -- exercise and stretching routines -- of the masses? To force an activity on the populace simply for being, in a targeted effort to reduce the nation's healthcare bills that are bringing the country down?

I strongly recommend we don't use this artificial opportunity to punish the healthy who aren't consuming medical services and adding to the stack of unpaid bills. They're the most innocent in this mess. You want those people on your side, more like them.

Instead, how about massive tax on high fructose corn syrup producers, and a 25-cent-per-product corn syrup tax? Let people see the ingredients tallied up on their checkout receipts. At 25cents a pop, maybe we'd encourage better choices from unhealthy consumers.

Better yet, just revise the archaic system of agricultural subsidies that artificially encourages fructose corn syrup overuse. That way, healthy people can opt out of a national plan to seriously address our nation's growing healthcare woes by addressing the root causes of many controllable illnesses, instead of just encouraging more healthcare consumption from those forced to pay for an unwanted monthly subscription to a "Quick Fix" commercial industry.* "got a problem?; have we got a pill for you!.."

(Check out Massachusetts where, once the healthy non-insured population was forced to pay premiums, guess who suddenly began consuming medical services? Because if you have to pay for it, you want to get your buck's worth... I don't think those normal psychological responses were calculated though, when the numbers crunchers figured predicted we could temporarily solve the shortfall by forcing the healthy to pay premiums for their non-use.)

Call me an economical expert, but I guarantee that reducing availability and consumption of that one product (today's corn syrup is yesterday's cigarette) will make for a healthier nation over the current plan: just shifting costs and transferring money via mandatory premiums from younger, healthier Americans to the aging grasshoppers who lived their "Me" lifestyles with no thoughts of caring for themselves in the future.

Means tested charity programs for our poor ill. Government monitored programs only for those who qualify, and need government help economically. =Take the entitlement attitude away. In short, encourage people to maintain health, and use the government programs only as a lifeline for those who can't pay.

And let those who privately support their elders finance their own self-preservation vehicles without having also to fund other people's choices. Thank you, and have a great day.

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* I think it's wonderful if private insurance companies want to cover "children" up until age 26. Disagree with favoring some groups over others though, arbitrarily choosing up winners and losers via mandatory insurance rules.

I think it's wonderful too the concept of private insurance: people who voluntarily pool their resources to provide for their needs. They want to cover children to 26, and others who have agreed and signed the same contract want the same and are willing to pay for it? Let the businesses and consumers privately decide what to cover, at what percentages, and who to cover at what agreed-upon, pre-determined amount. You don't like? You cancel the contract. Strictly voluntary this pool of people coming together and deciding their needs are similar and they want to share costs.

The whole thing falls apart when you remove the voluntary aspect though. Then -- to take one example -- by forcing private carriers to provide services for these children at 26 of the upper-middle class, you also permit them to take from a working person with less family resources who isn't using medical services at all and instead is insuring their health via daily personal choices.

Does that seem fair to you? Healthy even?

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*Lest you think I'm a medical Luddite, I'm a big fan of quality medicine like what happens at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. I'd vaccinate my children, if I had 'em; I practice preventative maintenance, and non-commercial nutrition. Exercise comes naturally -- what's more fun than moving your body, running and playing? You don't stop playing the games because you get old; you get old because you stop playing the games... Like Michelle Obama, I get that.

But today's medicine isn't practiced conservatively. We treat the symptoms not the root causes, and much of today's medical treatment is unnecessary by my pocketbook accounts. (And if I'm forced to pay premiums to keep this system temporarily afloat, my critical eye is going to find better ways to be spending my dollars. Let's get people healthy, seriously, even if takes tough love ... and those mandatory calensthetic programs George Will thinks will be legal, should the mandatory purchase plan pass muster too.)

I had a wonderful roommate in college, bright and ambitious... Northwestern chemistry, Baylor medicine. She's doing plastic surgery and Botox in Arizona now, not that there's anything wrong with that... We grow up, some of us let our dreams die. Some of us want to fight for our choices though, and resent being asked to defer our dreams to pay for the already consumed choices of others.

Is it really that hard to understand? Which version seems healthier to you? Choice, or having government and elites making healthcare system decisions -- affecting up to 25% of your monthly income! -- on behalf of the masses?

As a comparable lightweight myself, I say let individuals have the freedom to break free from the pack, and face the consequences of the choices out there alone. We know the odds, but we're willing to take that risk. And you know something?

Y'all need us, our types too:

"For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack."

We forget that first part, and lock into a mandatory solution penalizing the pack's young and healthy at our own collective risk.

"Wash daily from nose-tip to tail-tip; drink deeply, but never too deep;
And remember the night is for hunting, and forget not the day is for sleep.
The Jackal may follow the Tiger, but, Cub, when thy whiskers are grown,
Remember the Wolf is a Hunter -- go forth and get food of thine own..."

Come to think of it, I've never seen an obese wolf in the wild. That's a good thing, right?