10 Dec 2009 Everyone Must Buy a Chevy Malibu

I heard a very good point from radio host Sean Casey on WCBN radio (Baltimore) today on the question of the constitutionality of the health care insurance mandate.

He asked (paraphrase), “would it be constitutional if the federal government said we all had to buy a new Chevy Malibu every year?”

I think that’s the fastest explanation of the idiocy of the individual mandate I have heard yet.

One can, after all, build a solid case for mandating frequent purchases of Chevy Malibus: the taxpayers are invested in General Motors and would like their money back; new engines burn cleaner than old engines so it would be (on one level) good for the environment; people in Michigan and elsewhere need jobs and car manufacturing and selling creates them; old Chevy Malibus could be given to the poor, etc.

There are many good reasons to mandate annual purchases of Chevy Malibus, but that wouldn’t make a federal requirement that we must do so constitutional, and an individual mandate that we must buy health insurance isn’t constitutional, either.

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Labels: Constitutional Law, Government Health Care, Government Power, Health Care, Media, Retirement