For some reason any reservation about mandates for health insurance provokes the auto insurance is mandated.
I have become more and more offended at this. Not just because it is a meaningless analogy, but because people (pundits, journalists, and government representatives) never point out that it is not the same thing in any way.
First off, choosing to own a car is just that a choice. And with that choice comes in several variations: not owning a car, owning a clunker, owning a luxury car, owning several cars at once. Everyone of those choices can make your auto insurance costs different, and in one case guarantee that you have no auto insurance costs.
Being a living American citizen is a state of being, there are no choices involved. You are your age, your gender, your genetic makeup. If health insurance is mandated there will be no way to avoid involuntary purchase of insurance short of leaving the nation (and I'm not sure that would work). You won't be able to buy a safer less troublesome body to secure better insurance rates. And if you have a family you won't be able to sell one of them to lower those same insurance rates.
Mandated purchase of insurance is essentially the government opening the wallets of Americans, mostly middle class, so private Insurance companies can take as much as they want. There will be no recourse and little or no options beyond what level of mediocre to bad insurance can you afford or at least attempt to afford.
If Congress is going to do this, make it simple: Medicare for all. Price it and open Medicare for purchase by citizens who are not old enough for eligibility. That is your public option. No deals (what is the Obama White House agreeing to with these supposed deals?), no triggers (what do they think the last decade and double digit annual premium increases have been?), and at last no drama. Any attempt to cut Medicare funding or change its control should be a non starter health bill. Any public option without the full standing and bargaining power of the American government should be a non-starter for a reform bill. Reform the health care system in a manner that benefits the poor, the working class and the middle class or don't do it at all.
But first lets stop letting stupid arguments for bad reform decisions ride, rip apart false analogies for the apathetic and idiotic con they are.