Obama Admin: ObamaCare is Just Like Car Insurance (Wrong!)

Pajamas Media ^ | December 14, 2010 | Bryan Preston

[jazusamo]

Could switching to ObamaCare really destroy our health care system? Do liberals make weak, emotional arguments defending horrible policies?

Somebody get the GEICO gecko.  He’s about to be put in charge of our health care.

In the wake of Monday’s court decision ruling the individual mandate component of ObamaCare unconstitutional, the White House is trotting out a new line, which is actually an old line, and they’re trying to change the terms of the debate.  We shouldn’t be surprised, I guess: These people are trying to put a tax on breathing.  Any other tactic is fair game once you’ve tried that.

The White House blog, taking its cues from the left wing blogosphere, trotted out the car insurance argument Monday afternoon, here:

This concept [of forcing Americans to buy something as the price of citizenship] is clearly seen in other areas of commerce.  For example, in most states, drivers are required to carry a minimum level of auto insurance. Accidents happen and when they do, they need to be paid for quickly and responsibly. Requiring drivers to carry auto insurance accomplishes this goal. Similarly, the Affordable Care Act, through the individual responsibility requirement, will require everyone to carry some form of health insurance since everyone at some point in time participates in the health care system, and incur costs that must be paid for.

And then today, out come attorney general Eric Holder and HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius, with the same line in an op-ed for the Washington Post.

Imagine what would happen if everyone waited to buy car insurance until after they got in an accident. Premiums would skyrocket, coverage would be unaffordable, and responsible drivers would be priced out of the market.

This, along with changing the label of the “individual mandate” to the softer “individual responsibility,” forms the backbone of the Obama admininstration’s new strategy to defend ObamaCare.

Holder and Sebelius open their piece with the usual liberal sob story, about someone who couldn’t get coverage until ObamaCare rode in to save the day:

In March, New Hampshire preschool teacher Gail O’Brien, who was unable to obtain health insurance through her employer, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of lymphoma. Her subsequent applications for health insurance were rejected because of her condition. With each round of chemotherapy costing $16,000, she delayed treatment because she knew her savings wouldn’t last.

Then President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act. Thanks to this law, O’Brien is getting treatment through a temporary program that provides affordable coverage to people who’ve been shut out of the insurance market because of a preexisting condition. Even better, she knows that in 2014 insurers will be banned from discriminating against her or any American with preexisting conditions.

Funny thing about all that.  ObamaCare didn’t even contain state level high risk pools until the end stages of the debate, when according to Yuval Levin, the Democrats tacked them on to make the bill appear to be more effective before 2014.  Another funny thing about that: Most states already have high risk pools.  Texas has had its high risk pool in the law since 1989, and funded since 1997.  State high risk pools are expensive and like everything else, imperfect, but they generally work.  Texas didn’t need ObamaCare to tell us to create it.  If anything, ObamaCare’s mandates threaten to bankrupt the states by saddling them with billions in unfunded mandates, which will presumably destroy state health care risk pools and other similar programs.  ObamaCare isn’t the antidote, it’s the poison.

As to the argument that mandating health care is like mandating auto insurance, that argument doesn’t stand up to the facts.  Changing the nomenclature to “individual responsibility” rather than “individual mandate” doesn’t help strengthen the argument.  That the White House is doing both says that it has run out of strong legal arguments to buttress the law.

So one more time, let’s go through the various ways that ObamaCare is not like auto insurance.  For one thing, auto insurance is pegged to risk, while ObamaCare is explicitly intended to remove the link to risk — that’s what ObamaCare’s pre-existing conditions mandate does.  If you’re a driver with a clean record, you pay less than a driver with a terrible record, and if you live in a high crime neighborhood, you pay more for your insurance than residents of lower crime neighborhoods.  And at some point, a terrible driving record can make you uninsurable.  Auto insurance is also not used to pay for services before they’re needed.  Auto insurance pays for damage done, not routine maintenance.  And driving itself is not a right, it’s an earned privilege licensed by the state, done mostly on roads owned and maintained by the state, giving the state a great deal of say in who gets to drive and what they must to in order to maintain their driving privileges.  Auto insurance also is not tied to employment.  That coupling of employment and health insurance is itself an unintended result of government intervention in the marketplace.  ObamaCare just piles on more unwise intrusion into the private sector, rather than cleaning up the government’s previous mess.

Whereas auto insurance is tied to a privilege, ObamaCare is essentially a tax on your heartbeat.  The state didn’t start your heartbeat, it doesn’t maintain your heartbeat, and it doesn’t license your heartbeat.  But it does want to tax your heartbeat, and if you don’t comply it will send the IRS after you.

The auto insurance and health insurance markets are simply not analogous.  No amount of sophistry will make it so.

ObamaCare’s individual mandate, now re-branded individual responsibility, is also a tax on citizenship in that it forces citizens (and lawful residents) into economic relationships that are not forced on those who are here illegally.  In fact, to the extent that illegal aliens make up the “millions of uninsured” that we always hear about, and they make up a great deal of that number, ObamaCare’s mandate forces law-abiding Americans and residents to pay for the care of illegals who haven’t followed our basic laws of entry and also haven’t entered the health insurance market.  Is that fair?  We are already paying for that care via our local and state, and in some cases federal, taxes.  ObamaCare’s mandate is a double hit, and one that could end up pricing American citizenship itself out of the market.

The White House’s defense of ObamaCare is weak and fundamentally dishonest.  Their desired end state, as Obama himself admitted in more youthful moments, is single payer and the individual mandate is part of the path to get there (so was the so-called public option, which thankfully didn’t get past even a heavily Democrat congress). They couldn’t sell single payer or even the public option, so they sold ObamaCare and the individual mandate, and got a budget-busting, freedom-killing Frankenstein that most Americans oppose and that now a court has reasonably ruled is illegal.

Do we need reform?  Absolutely.  Is ObamaCare the reform that we need?  Absolutely not.  ObamaCare needs to be struck down or repealed, and replaced with market-based reforms that increase, rather than curb, our individual freedoms while strengthening, rather than swamping, state budgets.

Bryan Preston has been a leading conservative blogger and opinionator since founding his first blog in 2001. Bryan is a military veteran, worked for NASA, was a founding blogger and producer at Hot Air, was producer of the Laura Ingraham Show and, most recently before joining PJM, was Communications Director of the Republican Party of Texas.

[jazusamo]

Excellent point, I agree! :-)

[Lazlo in PA]

Nobody is buying their spin anymore. No matter what they say, the poll numbers stay increasingly high against them. Good luck selling this one Gibbs.

[pnh102]

In March, New Hampshire preschool teacher Gail O’Brien, who was unable to obtain health insurance through her employer ...

I love when they drag out people like this. Since we're paying this woman's bills, I'd like to know exactly why this person could not get group insurance through her employer. Most larger companies (this woman works for a school district) offer some form of group health insurance, and existing HIPAA rules allow for exemptions to preexisting condition limitations if a person changes insurance or jobs.

The only way, presumably, that this person could be excluded as a result of preexisting conditions is if she just got her job and had no insurance prior, or she chose not to pay for a group policy and was unable to obtain coverage when she got sick.

[Wolfie]

I’ll say it’s wrong. An auto-body shop, for example, is under no obligation to fix your car if you don’t have insurance. No health insurance? No problem. The ER has to treat you.

[God luvs America]

In March, New Hampshire preschool teacher Gail O’Brien, who was unable to obtain health insurance through her employer, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of lymphoma. Her subsequent applications for health insurance were rejected because of her condition. With each round of chemotherapy costing $16,000, she delayed treatment because she knew her savings wouldn’t last.

Then President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act. Thanks to this law, O’Brien is getting treatment through a temporary program that provides affordable coverage to people who’ve been shut out of the insurance market because of a preexisting condition. Even better, she knows that in 2014 insurers will be banned from discriminating against her or any American with preexisting conditions.

---

i hope ms o’brien gets well but what stopped her from going on the outside and purchasing an individual health policy??? why does she have to obtain it through her employer??

[LibLieSlayer]

Yeah sure... and dropping an Alka Seltzer into a bowl of pee makes it a bottle of Dom.

LLS

[jazusamo]

The bleeding heart liberals (RATS) are famous for finding or manufacturing cases like this by omitting facts that it’s hard to believe anything they say. These sad stories are most always not like they portray them.

[Danae]

The White House if full of morons.

“For example, in most states, drivers are required to carry a minimum level of auto insurance.”

In ALL states no one is FORCED to drive.

We are all forced to breathe. We are all forced to live, otherwise we are dead and don’t have need of any health-care. It is up to ME whether I want insurance or not. It is up to ME to decide under what conditions I will or won’t carry it. Not Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid or that cretin soiling the White House.

I have NEVER seen such an insane lack of logic from any administration.

[jazusamo]

You’re right on the money.

Obama is not an intelligent person as so many libs would have us believe and he’s surrounded himself with libs and idiots with an agenda. They have little or no logic but make decisions on emotion. It isn’t funny but the lot of them are laughing stocks.

[DanMiller]

There is another argument which I think is even better, at least for those who still think the Constitution is a significant document:

The Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution extends to the federal government authority to regulate interstate commerce; without the Commerce Clause, the federal government would have no such authority. That authority is not the same as the authority of the states and they do not derive their authority from it; depending on their own constitutions, some states might be able to mandate medical insurance, pet bird insurance or the purchase of air conditioning maintenance contracts.

There are obvious differences between federally mandated medical insurance and state mandated automobile and other liability insurance. However, that the federal government has only those powers granted by the Constitution is the most important distinction. Contrary to the apparent views of some, the United States is not one of the fifty-seven fifty states. The limits of the Commerce Clause formed the basis for Judge Hudson’s decision. The Commerce Clause just does not permit the federal medical insurance mandate.

There are lots of things some would like to have the federal government do; fortunately, it lacks the authority to do many of them and fortunately the courts sometimes tell it.

[Castigar]

Actually obamacare is more like forcing you to buy a car AND car insurance.

The fact is that if you don’t own a car and/or don’t drive on public roads you don’t have to buy car insurance. You can easily opt out of the car insurance requirement by not owning a car and you won’t be penalized by the state for it. However, if you don’t want to buy health insurance under obamacare you DO get penalized.

It’s a terrible argument!

[Seaplaner]

The auto insurance and health insurance markets are simply not analogous. No amount of sophistry will make it so.

Which will make this such an interesting argument when it gets to the Supremes.

.

[Seaplaner]

When a car is "totaled", it's considered too old and/or expensive to repair, and it goes to the scrap yard.

So the only true analogy between Obamacare and car insurance is... (you already guessed it)...

A Death Panel!

.

[ronnyquest]

"...in most states, drivers are required to carry a minimum level of auto insurance."

Therein lies the reason: it is a STATE mandate, not a federal mandate, and not universal.

[chris_bdba]

No it is not like cat insurance.If I don’t own a car and do not drive I do not have to buy it.With health insurace I have to if I am alive big difference.

[susannah59]

If ObamaCare is just like my car insurance, when are they going to start making my auto insurance carrier pay (at least partially) for my oil changes? New tires? Brake jobs?

[Eagle of Liberty]

Driving is a selective choice made by the individual. You DO NOT have to drive...you choose to.

So, when something is a selective choice, govt can mandate whatever they want?

[CharacterCounts]

I don't think there is one state which requires anyone to purchase auto insurance just because they own a car. Rather, they require you to purchase auto insurance in order to legally drive the car on public roads.

[CharacterCounts]

For example, in most states, drivers are required to carry a minimum level of auto insurance.

This is actually the best argument against Obamcare.

the operative word in the example is "drivers". If auto insurance mandates were truly like the health care mandate, they would require non drivers to purchase insurance or pay a penalty and allow people to purchase insurance after the accident.

[Eagle of Liberty]

The purpose of auto insurance is to protect other drivers, not you

Okay. You got me. I do see the legality of liability insurance so that I can pay for damage to another person or their property.