[ExI] health care individual mandate

[spike]

> ...On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty
...
> 
> I mentioned car insurance as an example of the theory that if 
> everyone is forced to have it then the costs will be lower 
> for everyone...

Sure I recognize this to be true, however one has the option to not drive.
The car insurance question is fundamentally different from the health
insurance question.


>  I guess if everyone pays for health 
> insurance... no, I can't even begin to accept that forcing 
> everyone to pay makes the price cheaper as much as forcibly 
> raising the number of consumers.

Ja, actually I diverge there to a different question.  I am not arguing the
total health bill goes up or down, or whether everyone should have health
insurance (I think all people should have health insurance, and if they all
did, total costs might well go down.)  Rather the real question to me is
whether the US government has the authority to make its citizens buy it.  I
look at the constitution, I don't see that the government has that
authority.  If it did, it could instantly solve the persistent social
problem of homelessness.  It could simply pass a law that requires every
person to buy a house.

spike