Viewpoints: For starters, Justice Scalia, broccoli isn't health insurance

The Sacramento Bee ^ | March 31, 2012 | by Paul Krugman

[Oldeconomybuyer]

Nobody knows what the Supreme Court will decide with regard to the Affordable Care Act. But, after this week's hearings, it seems quite possible that the court will strike down the "mandate" – the requirement that individuals purchase health insurance – and maybe the whole law.

Let's start with the already famous exchange in which Justice Antonin Scalia compared the purchase of health insurance to the purchase of broccoli, with the implication that if the government can compel you to do the former, it can also compel you to do the latter. That comparison horrified health care experts all across America because health insurance is nothing like broccoli.

Why? When people choose not to buy broccoli, they don't make broccoli unavailable to those who want it. But when people don't buy health insurance until they get sick – which is what happens in the absence of a mandate – the resulting worsening of the risk pool makes insurance more expensive, and often unaffordable, for those who remain. As a result, unregulated health insurance basically doesn't work, and never has.

As I said, we don't know how this will go. But it's hard not to feel a sense of foreboding – and to worry that the nation's already badly damaged faith in the Supreme Court's ability to stand above politics is about to take another severe hit.

[hinckley buzzard]

When people choose not to buy broccoli, they don't make broccoli unavailable to those who want it

Anyone who understands free markets will see immediately that this is an economically illiterate statement, in relative degree. If enough people decide not to buy broccoli, it will disappear from the shelves, thus making it "unavailable to those who want it." It is that simple, and yet the Nobel Economist can't figure it out.

Pathetic.

[Monorprise]

“Exactly! Which is why we must force young, healthy people to buy insurance they won’t use.

So now that they’re paying into Social Security that they’ll never collect and health insurance they don’t want and won’t use, maybe they’ll get a clue and vote against Obama this time?”

Do not taunt the leftist tyrant! You know he wants to screw every last one of us.

So call “Young & health people” don’t have any money to buy health insurance and frankly have a hard enough time finding a job that will even pay them minimum wage much less minimum wage + health insurance.

Insolently nether healthcare nor health insurance are anywhere mentioned in the Federal constitution much less mentioned as legitimate Powers and/or functions of the Federal Government. From which you might even infer that theses oppressive measures are even remotely related to their legitimate functions.

Even if you lawlessly assume Washington has some kind of legitimate athoirty over a private intrastate industry such as health insurance you know the individual mandate is not nessary as Maryland has demonstrated.

[ctdonath2]

Robbing Peter to pay Paul is not justified by the good it will do Paul.

[aruanan]

Thanks. It's part of a longer piece I wrote while in a class in graduate school that discussed topics in nutrition. I was disturbed by the attitude of the professors that something needed to be done and it needed to be accomplished by a federal program. So I wrote that as a distillation of everything conservative I'd read over the previous fifteen years or so, including The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis and The Law by Frederic Bastiat. About the only comment from the one who led the class was that the piece was "somewhat cynical."

[Condor51]

"unregulated health insurance"

I knew Krugman wasn't exactly bright, but I didn't know he was a COMPLETE MORON!

If health insurance is so "unregulated", then how come I can't buy it from a company in .... Utah? Or Maine, or Iowa, Wyoming, ..... or GUAM! If it is sooooooo, "unregulated", how come I couldn't buy 'Basic Blue' from Blue Cross?

If I did want Blue Cross I had to buy a policy that complied with IL law. And that included extras I didn't want, need, ever use, and that were a NOT in the 'Basic Blue' policy advertised on TV.

Ergo Paul, if health insurance really was "unregulated" I could call GEICO (or any Ins Co) and have basic coverage -- aka: Major Medical -- in ten minutes. But I CAN'T you BONEHEAD because it is "REGULATED"! That being said, there is one thing that really is "unregulated" that involves 'health insurance' and that is "unregulated" Ambulance Chasing Lawyers like John Edwards!

Him and his bottom feeding cronies make a killing suing Doctors and Hospitals for a misdiagnosed Hangnail Infection. But oddly this thing called 'Tort Reform' wasn't even mentioned as a footnote in ObamaCare.

How come 'professor Krugman'? Answer that jerkweed.

....crickets....

[AndrewB]

Dude, it’s TRAGEDY not TRAGITY of the commons. I’m letting you off with a warning this time...

[Texas Songwriter]

Scalia never intimated broccoli was health insurance. He said under the broadest interpretation (perversion) of the commerce clause health care requires the takeover of insurance companies. He said with this broad of an interpretation of the commmerce clause health requires eating, and all people need to eat, therefore under the broadest perversion of the commerce clause one could envision the regulation of the purchace of food (broccoli). So Krugman has defined himself as a pathetic listener, a foolish observer, and a deceitful writer. In other words, he fits right in at the New York TIMES.

[GOPJ]

If we can be forced to buy health insurance, we can be forced to buy a Volt.

[DrC]

Worse: “If We Can Force People to Purchase Health Insurance, then Let’s Force Them to Be Treated Too” This article argues that Supreme Court approval of Congressional authority, exercised in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, to require the individual purchase of health insurance on interstate commerce grounds necessarily translates into Congressional power to positively affect interstate commerce by mandating that individuals submit to undergo certain forms of demonstrably cost-effective medical treatment (e.g., influenza vaccination, treatment of depression, and reduction of cardiovascular disease through medication to control blood pressure and cholesterol). The article assumes that the Supreme Court will endorse the public health (“Health care is special”) rationale undergirding the PPACA and extends that rationale to potential federal mandates that individuals submit to medical interventions shown to improve their individual health and society’s well-being. Objections to such federal mandates of medical treatment are noted, but rejected. If Americans do not have a constitutional right to refuse to purchase an individual health insurance policy, then neither do they have a legally enforceable right to refuse specific socially beneficial medical treatments. http://jhpplnewsandnotes.wordpress.com/2012/04/03/if-we-can-force-people-to-purchase-health-insurance-then-lets-force-them-to-be-treated-too-by-marshall-kapp-ssrn/

It’s obvious that if the mandate is upheld, it will them be used as a lever to impose all sorts of offensive obligations on Americans. Being forced to eat broccoli is the least of our worries!