Before the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), health insurance companies would refuse to sell insurance policies to Americans who
had a pre-existing condition such as heart disease or diabetes. They refused because such customers would end up costing more in paid-out healthcare benefits than the amounts they would pay in insurance premiums (premiums are the cost customers pay to maintain their insurance). Remember that many health insurance companies need to make a profit, and as such are careful about the amount of money coming in in the form of premiums. Obamacare banned insurance companies from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions. The problem with this part of the law is that more sickly people would now be more likely to sign up for health insurance, while healthy people may only pay for insurance once they get sick. This would create a health insurance pool of patients that would tend to be sick and would potentially drive insurance companies out of business. As a way to increase the amount of healthy people in the insurance pool, Obamacare also required that all people must buy health insurance or face a fine. The goal here was to have a mix of healthy and sick people buying insurance. This would allow healthy people to help pay for the costs of people who got sick. What arguments could be made for or against forcing people to buy health insurance?
This is in my opinion one of the aspects that makes the central courts and the different lines of thought within a single subject so interesting. The clash of ideas that we have in this case is a perfect example.
On one side we have those who look at the current 30 million uninsured Americans, which include millions in Texas, and the undeniable success it had in Massachusetts. Most of them conclude that this mandate is a government success.
On the other hand, we can find those who believe that this is a terrible invasion of the government to the citizen's free will to choose their own healthcare options, they see government overreach, and at the same time an unprecedented intrusion on individual liberties to which there is no justification.
Unfortunately this is something that millions of Americans have been forced into. It's evident how they refused to create a public health care system, and instead give more power to the private sector.
After this short debate of ideas, I will give you one question to ponder on: Which principle is more important? Your freedom, your civil liberties, and your freedom from the government line of thought, or the possibilty of providing health care to millions of uninsured Americans?
People shouldn’t be forced to buy a product if they don’t want to.
This represents an overreach of government power.
For
Anyone can get sick and the rest of us should take care of those who have bad luck.
Insurance companies can go back to refusing coverage if the system falls apart and insurance companies can’t pay their costs.
Progressive did and still do tend to view the role of government as "taking an active role in the
<span> economy and society." They believe government interventions are in general a good thing. </span>
