Mandates Today, Mandates Tomorrow, Mandates…

By now the administration’s “accomodation” to the furor generated by its earlier refusal to exempt religious schools, hospitals, and charities from its new Obamacare-based requirement that all employers, including employers with religious objections, must provide a panoply of birth control products and services in their insurance plans for employees is well known. The proposed “accomodation” shifts the obligation from employers to their insurance providers, who must cover those  products and services “free” — that is, without charge to the covered employees or in the costs of the plan to the employer.

Thus we now learn that the highly controversial “individual mandate” at the heart of Obamacare to buy a commercial product is not alone. It has now been joined by what may be the first corporate mandate to give away a product for free in American history. “There is simply no precedent for the government ordering private companies to offer a product for free,” as the Wall Street Journal noted today in an editorial.

If this “accommodation” stands, we are likely to see many more mandates, both corporate and individual. Why stop with the insurance companies?  Why not, for starters, require the pharmaceutical companies to provide pills free of charge? Why not require doctors to provide free birth control-related treatment? Why not, for that matter, require home builders to provide free homes to the homeless?

The Obama administration is giving a whole new meaning to the concept of a “command economy,” which until now has been defined  “an economy where supply and price are regulated by the government rather than market forces.” The traditional example, of course, was the Soviet Union:

Government planners decide which goods and services are produced and how they are distributed. The former Soviet Union was an example of a command economy.

As this now outmoded definition confirms, it is misleading, not to say unfair, to accuse Obama of being a socialist. Socialists, after all, regulate both “supply and price.” Obama orders up the supply, but commands the price to be zero.

 

 

 

 

Say What? (3)

  1. Cobra February 13, 2012 at 8:16 pm | | Reply

    If there was SINGLE PAYER, there would be no need to employer-provided health insurance to even get into these religious exemption issues, right?

    –Cobra

  2. DWinOC February 13, 2012 at 8:46 pm | | Reply

    Cobra, not right, but wrong. Coercing some people to subsidize access or services which they may find morally objectionable or don’t use for whatever reason is present in single payer. Whether payment is made as a premium to an insurance company or through taxes, fees or mandates to gov’t the result is the same. In either case the political process rather than market forces is allocating resources. In either case gov’t has emerged as the agent of ultimate moral judgement, individual belief or conscience being damned in the process.

  3. Cobra February 18, 2012 at 4:19 pm | | Reply

    By your argument, no Quaker should ever have to pay taxes when our country is at war.

    Individual belief or conscience is subservient to government law. Just because I believe I should be able to drive 75 mph through a school zone, doesn’t override posted government speed limit signs.

    –Cobra

Say What?