The Courage of Their Own Convictions

When the Democrats had a majority in Congress, the did not vote through a bill which included a government option for health insurance; i.e., they did not extend Medicare to everyone.

Presumably, they had counted heads and found not enough Democrats were brave enough to risk the wrath of the insurance companies and the voters back home. Most people believed if you offered Medicare for all, the vast numbers of citizens would vote with their feet and go for Medicare, rather than for commercial, profit-first, listed on the stock exchange insurance companies who don't care about anyone's health but care only about the bottom line: profit. So if you offered the people all the attractions of that bogeyman, government run health insurance, the people would leap at the chance to take it and would forsake the insurance companies which have been screwing them for years.

Actually, it was the insurance companies, those bastions of free enterprise the Republicans love so, which argued, look, if you want us to offer insurance to people with pre existing conditions and to the 24 year old, just out of college who wants to remain on his parents' health insurance, you will bankrupt us, becauase then we'll be paying out more than we take in, with all those sick people with pre existing conditions we can no longer ignore and reject. So give us some people who will do what every insurance company depends upon: Pay in for years and get nothing back, other than peace of mind.

And the Democrats counted up how many people make their living selling health insurance, administering health insurance, and they counted how many dollars those companies contribute to political campaigns and they wilted. They caved. They didn't have the balls to do the right thing.

So now, the Republicans on the Supreme Court can argue they are all for insuring people who want health insurance ,but you cannot force people to buy something they don't want to buy, you cannot take away the liberty of a 25 year old who wants to ride a motorcycle and who will wind up on the ER and on life support and then in the neurology ward, you cannot make a young person, who is, as Justice Scalia noted with great sympathy, "just starting out" pay for health insurance or make him pay a penalty if he refuses to help society assume his risk for him.

Of course, your concern for liberty does not make you liberate the hospitals from the responsibility of taking care of the irresponsible. The kid who loses that bet cannot be turned away from the hospital door, not morally, not even legally. Federal and state law requires the uninsured be treated.

Fair enough.

The Democrats were wimps and fail to pass a single payor plan, did not have the courage of their own convictions.

And now, once again, the Republicans have out maneuvered the whimps, by making the hapless Dems pass a plan which will provide care through commercial providers. Then the Republicans say, but you cannot force a person to engage in commerce!

Gottcha.