The coercion begins

Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner Kim Holland is haughtily proposing that residents who don't purchase health insurance be punished by imposing completely unrelated penalties upon them.

Holland would crack down on people who dare to decline health insurance by levying such sanctions as: suspending their driver's licenses, disallowing their income tax deductions and, most incredibly, forbidding them to purchase college football season tickets.

Too poor to afford coverage? Wealthy and wish to pay cash for your checkups? Have some kind of religious or moral objection to buying insurance? Tough. "Purchase what we tell you to, or else we take away your ability to drive to the stadium to watch the Sooners play, and we'll keep even the small amount of your tax dollars that we currently allow you to deduct".

I fail to see where the national or Oklahoma state Constitutions grant the government the power to mandate that peasants buy a certain product or face sanctions, but I guess that's not stopping them.

What's worse, Ms. Holland's insane plan is being backed by state REPUBLICANS:

"State Rep. Kris Steele, co-chair of the House Health Care Reform Task Force, said requiring Oklahomans to purchase health insurance is not a popular stance among lawmakers, but that he is not opposed to mandated incentives.

'I believe the place to start is to create a situation within our state that people are without excuse for not having health insurance,' Steele said. 'Once we get to the point where people are without excuse, then we create the incentives.'

'Those incentives would include rewarding those who obtain insurance and punishing those who don’t', said Steele, R-Shawnee.

'You need the carrot and the stick,' he said." (all emphases mine)

You and Ms. Holland need to be smacked with those sticks, sir, for suggesting that state-sanctioned coercion is the right way to solve anything that has to do with the marketplace. If people wish to take responsibility for their own lives, their choice should be respected, not punished.

What will be next, forcing people to become organ donors unless they specifically opt out beforehand, which the English government is now debating making the law over there, against the advice of its own health-care experts?

I can just see the propaganda now - "Become an organ donor or be prohibited from registering your kids for school", or "Buy a Twinkie, pay a 500% tax on it or get 30 days of community service".

Personally, I prefer Ho-Hos, and it's no business of the government's how many of them I consume.


One of the commenters on the article, "Murf", eloquently makes some of the very same points that we try to hammer home here on a regular basis:

"As an American living in England, let me tell you that the socialized healthcare of the UK is horrible. As a guy who spent a lot of time professionally and personally in hospitals (military medic, civilian engineer designing medical networks, having had numerous injuries, etc.), I found that the dirtiest US hospital is FAR cleaner than the cleanest UK hospital.

The National Health Service in UK is a model of inefficiency and waste, and cleanliness isn't a priority despite the absolute epidemic of hospital acquired infections. Sheets were not being washed between patients despite it costing about 3 cents/sheet, though there are tons of administrators. Socialized medicine is no answer...

...Something to consider, all of these laws are enforced by men with guns. The government says you need health insurance, so they fine you, take away your entertainments (like the season tickets), and your driving license (itself a way of converting the freedom of travel right to a privilege). Now you get caught driving without a license, and you get taken to jail. If you vigorously resist going to jail, you get coerced or killed by the police for resistance.

So, the ultimate answer to those who don't get health insurance and spend their money in the way the government tells them (which is the effective definition of a slave, especially with income taxes and drafts established by precedent) is to use the threat or actual use of lethal force for compliance. For non compliance types, having health insurance is ultimately so important to government types that they are willing to kill those who won't do it. But it is for your own good, remember that."

Well said. VERY well said.